Skippers

You've probably seen them, and like me perhaps thought of them as miniature butterflies. In reality, these tiny winged creatures looking like butterflies are known as Skippers, apparently not true butterflies. They are very small and their bodies seem to appear proportion -ally larger to their wings than a butterfly's does and they have an angular appearance to them. Note the body size on this skipper pictured above appears to be quite large in the first two photos. This is an Arctic Skipper. A couple of other skippers I have photographed and identified this spring are as follows; first a Peck's Skipper and lastly a Northern Cloudywing.

There is a wide variety of Skippers out there and it is fun to try to identify them, although it is not always easy. I shall be posting others as the spring and summer progresses. The field guide I use as a reference source is: Butterflies through Binoculars The East A Field Guide To The Butterflies of Eastern North America, by Jeffrey Glassberg, Oxford University Press, 1999