northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here's a Horace's Duskywing from last summer. Unless it's a Juvenal's Duskywing ; together they comprise another pair of very similar and related butterflies. But let's go with the Horace theory. Like a lot of skippers , the duskywings are difficult to identify because they're fairly similar. They differ from a lot of the skippers I see by being spread-winged skippers , who are much more inclined to hold their wings down when at rest than the grass skippers . I initially thought this butterfly might have been named after Horace Waller , a lepidopterist and anti-slavery activist alive around the time of the discovery of this butterfly, but apparently many of the duskywings are named after Roman poets like Horace . As caterpillars these butterflies feed on oaks. They also survive the winter as caterpillars and are probably ready to enter their chrysalis stage as soon as spring arrives. August 5, 2021 at Duke Farms Photo 148952672, (c) jpviolette, some rights res...

Here's a duskywing butterfly I met this summer. I wasn''t confident of what it was, and the iNaturalist community hasn't weighed in on it either. (I suspect if I had more pictures from different angles, somebody would have figured it out by now.) The main candidates that iNaturalist's photo recognition software suggested were: Horace's Duskywing  (iNaturalist's first suggestion, which is usually the best suggestion) Wild Indigo Duskywing  (a butterfly that's become widespread because of its ability to use the invasive legume Crownvetch as a host plant) Juvenal's Duskywing Common Sootywing (despite the name, an increasingly uncommon relative of the duskywings) All four of these are mostly dark spread-winged skippers . Some of the spread-winged skippers (including the Wild Indigo) are so similar to some of its relatives that they form the persius complex , where habitat and host plants are the easiest way to distinguish them. I'll try and update...