northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's a Swarthy Skipper from last summer. Why swarthy ? From this view where you see the underside of the wings, it looks like a fairly light brown butterfly. If you see the top view of the wings though, you should see more of a dark gray or light black color. So this fella might have a swarthy side that you just can't see in this picture. These guys are, like a lot of the skippers I see, a grass skipper , meaning that they use some type of grass as host plants when they're caterpillars. Though most sources say they'll only use Little Bluestem  [1] grass as a host, at least one suggested they'll also use some other unnamed grasses. The Swarthy Skipper was first documented as a species in 1824 by the French entomologist Pierre Andre Latreille  [2]. AFAIK Latreille never journeyed to America, so I'm assuming someone sent him butterflies (he also documented our Tawny-edged Skipper ) and other insects to him in France where he determined which ones were new specie...