Greetings and salutations from the Speaking of Nature Outdoor Writing Annex (SNOWA) here at maison Danielson. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the setup of my house, the SNOWA is simply a card table set up on my deck in the shade of the cottonwood tree. After the remnants of Hurricane Isaias roared through last week, the weather has been breathtakingly spectacular to the point that I actually feel physical pain if I am stuck inside. So, outside I must be.
The SNOWA definitely has its perks. I am surrounded by flowers (cultivated, but still gorgeous) and their number and sumptuous color have been sufficient to attract the local hummingbirds. At one point, an adult male was less than three feet from my right ear as he explored the blossom of an enormous orange zinnia. I have also had honeybees, bumblebees and butterflies searching for nectar among the flowers and the entire situation is just so lovely that I feel I have to do something special. Thus, I shall follow last week’s column on flowers with a column on a butterfly that I have never covered in 23 years.
Perhaps the greatest group of animals on Earth is the class Insecta. These are animals with exoskeletons, six legs and (often) wings and it is estimated that there are between 6-10 million different species. We have currently only described about a million of these species, and taxonomists have had quite a job of sorting the insects into smaller and smaller groups. One such group is the insect order Lepidoptera.
There are about 180,000 different species in this group making it a substantial portion of the total known and cataloged species on the planet. One of the key characteristics that identifies an insect as a member of the Lepidopteran order is the presence of small scales on the wings. This is why the wings of butterflies are so colorful compared to those of bees, wasps and dragonflies. In fact, the word “Lepidoptera” is a mash-up of two Ancient Greek words; “Lepis,” meaning “scale” and “pteron” meaning wing. Thus, the butterflies are in the scale-wing group.
Now, among the butterflies there is a smaller group known as the skippers (the family Hesperiidae), which are butterflies with relatively large bodies, angular wings and a thin extension (the apiculus) on the club of the antennae. There are about 3,000 species of skippers worldwide and there are roughly 75 species in eastern North America. It is diabolically difficult to tell one species from another and of all those species there is approximately one (1) that I can identify without the help of a book – the silver-spotted skipper (Epargyreus clarus).
One of the largest of the skippers, the silver-spotted skipper is also easy to identify by the markings on the underwings. With wings akimbo, the silver-spotted is the same dull rust-brown that many other skippers adorn themselves with, but when the wings are closed above the skipper’s back there is a swath of silver-white scales that make it impossible to confuse with any other species.
Common from July to mid-August, and then again for the first half of September (the last generation of the year) the silver-spotted skipper is found in fields, meadows, gardens and woodland openings where the caterpillars can feast on the leaves of black locust trees and other herbaceous plants in the legume family (think peas). In fact, the pointed-leaved tick trefoil from last week’s column might be a host plant for this skipper. As adults, the silver-spotted skipper just likes flowers in general and will visit wildflowers in fields as readily as it will visit flowers in gardens. Fast, flashy and uncharacteristically identifiable for a skipper, it should prove a real treat if you can spot one in your yard.
So get outside and enjoy the weather. The magical month of August has a great deal in store for us no matter what time of day it is. You can hunt skippers in the daytime and then watch the Perseid Meteor Shower at night (peak meteor frequency of about 100 per hour will occur on August 12). The important thing is to turn off the TV and go outside whenever and wherever you can. Enjoy it while it lasts because we’ll be talking about the leaves changing colors in just a few weeks.
Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 23 years, but he can only identify one species of skipper without a book. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service and the Massachusetts State Parks and currently teaches high school biology. Visit www.speakingofnature.com for more information, or head over to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.