Broad-winged Skipper
Here's one of our larger but fairly nondescript grass skippers, the Broad-winged Skipper. In theory when the wings are up you should see light brown wings with a light line going front-to-back and with a light spot above and 1-2 light spots below that line. (With a little additional imagination, this is sometimes described as a light cross symbol.)
And although they're more colorful in this wings-down position (common among grass skippers), it's still not a slam dunk to ID this butterfly. On the left it looks like the front wing is up with the rear wing down. This pattern is similar to other skippers like the Zabulon Skipper, though I'd expect the dark border to be narrower on a Zabulon. On the right it looks like both the rear and front wings are down, giving a view helps more with gender than species; the orangish spots would look white on a female.
As you can see in my picture, those light marks can be pretty subtle. You can probably make out what I'm talking about, but as field marks go they don't necessarily jump out at you.
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| July 31, 2022 at Duke Farms Photo 222579090, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) |
And although they're more colorful in this wings-down position (common among grass skippers), it's still not a slam dunk to ID this butterfly. On the left it looks like the front wing is up with the rear wing down. This pattern is similar to other skippers like the Zabulon Skipper, though I'd expect the dark border to be narrower on a Zabulon. On the right it looks like both the rear and front wings are down, giving a view helps more with gender than species; the orangish spots would look white on a female.
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| July 24, 2018 at Murray Hill Photo 22913271, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) |
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