northeast-flora-and-fauna

Here are a couple Zabulon Skippers from last spring. It's weird that this is one of our most common local butterflies but we still don't know common things about them. For example, we don't even know how the species survives the winter. (You'd think that some poor postdoc would get the assignment of following 1 of them around all winter, but no! Nobody got that assignment.) These knowledge gaps are somewhat inconsistent. The Zabulons have a close relative - sometimes they're mistaken for 1 another - called the Hobomok Skipper , and we know that as partially grown caterpillars they'll make a silk tube to overwinter in. If I had to guess, I'd be suspicious that Zabulon Skippers do the same, but that's just a guess. June 20, 2023 at Washington Valley Reservoir Photo 301112431, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) June 20, 2023 at Washington Valley Reservoir Photo 301113311, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

I met these male and female Red-winged Blackbirds about 2 minutes apart - could they soon be in wedded bliss? Well, it's possible, though as you can see in the background of the 1st picture (the male) there was competition in the meadow. (My recollection is that that wasn't all of his competition either.) And while Red-winged Blackbird pairs form more of a relationship than yesterday's Zabulon Skippers do, they're not exactly monogamous either. The males attempt to claim and hold a territory they think the females will want to live in. Only the toughest, fittest males can hold onto these prime spots. The males will then mate with as many females as there are who want to raise their children there, so a male will frequently have more than 1 "wife". (The females probably do cheat on the males a bit too, so maybe this evens out?)  While the female will do most of the work of raising her nestlings, it does sound like the male whose territory she's in will he...

Here are male and female Zabulon Skippers I met about 5 minutes apart; could they wind up in marital bliss? Well, probably not the way humans would define it. I believe that even if they did mate, a male defending a good territory will probably mate with more than 1 female, and after mating the female probably never sees her "husband" again. And of course being 5 minutes away may mean that the female was actually in the territory of a completely different male, and she got together with that different male instead. Zabulons are fairly common butterflies, so the female probably didn't have to travel very far to find a receptive male. The 1st picture shows the male Zabulon Skipper who's not feeding but probably looking for males to chase away and females to court. The 2nd picture shows a female who looks like she's nectaring on a Red Clover . June 3, 2023 at John Clyde Native Grassland Preserve Photo 300858592, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC) June 3...

Skippers like the Zabulon Skipper are quite common if quite often overlooked. That's no doubt due to their earth-toned coloring and their relatively small size. These butterflies generally produce 2 broods in NJ, causing population peaks in June and again in August. That makes this fella maybe a smidgen early but clearly part of the June brood. He could be looking out a blades of grass, which would have been a food source in his childhood (AKA caterpillar) though now he lacks the mouth parts to eat grass even if he wanted to: When I was a caterpillar, I crawled as a caterpillar, I ate as a caterpillar, I thought as a caterpillar; but when I became a butterfly I put aside caterpillary things. It's believed that they overwinter in NJ as (presumably dormant) caterpillars though it sounds like this is another thing we don't know with certainty. May 26, 2023 at Duke Farms Photo 300288117, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)

Here's a few skipper butterflies that're kind of good-looking when you get a good look at them: Zabulon Skippers . At least I'm pretty sure it's a Zabulon; there are other skippers in the area that look similar: Hobomok Skipper - More common in northern New Jersey, and generally veinier. Delaware Skipper - The forewing should have a weird harpoon-like dark shape, and it's also rather veiny. Broad-winged Skipper - Should have an even larger dark mark on the forewing that makes the yellow/orange patch resemble "a boot kicking a stone". In the 1st 2 pictures you can see the yellow/orange patch has a little point or hook out wide that's lacking in the other butterflies. In the 3rd picture you only seen the (less distinctive) wing bottoms, yellowish with spots. This is consistent with the Zabulon, not so much for the Hobomok. Skipper identification isn't easy, especially if you don't get a picture and don't quickly spot a field mark. Too many...

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.) 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. 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. O...

Here's a Zabulon Skipper I met at Negri-Nepote Native Grassland Preserve. This is a male; the females look a lot different. (There's that sexual dimorphism at work again.) While the males don't look much like the females, they do look quite similar to the Hobomok Skipper . The biggest difference is that the Hobomok would have darker veins going through those orangish patches. It's easy to think these butterflies are pretty close relatives. I meet these guys a lot. June 2, 2021 at Negri-Nepote Native Grassland Preserve Photo 136367674, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)