Sachem

Here's one of our skipper butterflies, the Sachem. The males have a fairly distinctive dark square mark on the wing when seen from above. This is a female though, so that clear field mark isn't present here. My Eastern Butterflies field guide suggests looking for the white mark on the forewing that's closest to the head, while my Field Guide to Butterflies of North America seems to say that the dark patch a little in front of the white spot is what we should look for. (I wonder if the latter dark patch is the female's equivalent of the male's more distinctive dark mark.) The skippers are going to be an identification challenge; there are a lot of them, many look similar, and the distinguishing features can be fairly subtle.

The Sachem is considered a grass skipper, but apparently it's mistaken for some of the branded skippers, so apparently they look a little more like their more distant relatives than some of their closer relatives.

August 19, 2020 at Finderne


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