Least Skipper on Milkweed Flower

The least skipper is a small grass skipper that is found in the eastern United States and south eastern Canada. It is the smallest skipper in North America. Their range extends west to about the middle of the US. They are usually found in wet habitats that have tall grass. Places like marshes, and the edges of ponds, lakes and streams are great places to look for these small butterflies. They look very similar to the European skipper, which is an invasive species that is also found in the eastern half of North America. The hind wing of the least skipper is more rounded and the wing veins are more pronounced then those of the European skipper. The least skipper also has longer antennae that are black and white striped where the European skipper has shorter orange and black antennae. Least skippers are nectar feeders. They often feed on smaller flowers then many other butterflies do including different species of clover and vetch. In this case this butterfly has found the only open bloom on this milkweed plant.

Butterflies

During the summer, when the birding gets a little slow, I have turned to photographing other parts of nature. At the beginning of last September I found quite a few interesting butterflies to photograph. Even though the least skipper is pretty common in North America many people over look it due to its small size.

Even though the Cabbage White butterfly is a common sight around woods, roadsides, farms, gardens and yards it is actually not native to North America. They originally came from Europe and were accidentally released into Canada back in the 1860s.
It is easy to distinguish between the male and female cabbage white by the number of spots on the forewing. If the butterfly has one spot, such as the first picture, then it is male but if it has two on the forewing, as shown above, then it is a female..
The eastern-tailed blue is another small butterfly that can be found through out most of the eastern part of North America, from the eastern coast of Canada and The US west to North Dakota, Colorado and central Texas, as well as parts of Mexico and the West Coast.
The eastern-tailed blue is a member of the Gossamer-wing family of butterflies and can be identified by the long hair like tail on the hindwing for which it gets its name. The only other blue butterfly with a tail is its cousin the western-tailed blue which is a bit larger and lacks orange spots at the base of the hind wing.

Eastern-tailed blue butterflies have a number of different types of host plants. Since their proboscis, or feeding tube, is not very long they look for short tubed flowers or ones that are open. Favorites include white clover, white sweet clover, shepherd's needle, wild strawberry, flea-bane. asters, winter cress and others. In the picture above two eastern tail blue are using their proboscis to drink nectar from a birds-foot trefoil flower.

South Dakota Butterflies

For those of you who are like me, and really miss seeing butterflies around, here are a few pics that I took while I was at the shorebird workshop that I took back in August (8-8-08) in South Dakota .
This first picture is an example of a least skipper. You can identify the least skipper by the unmarked hind wing as well as the black and white antennae. This looks like it is a male because it has a thin pointed abdomen. Females have a shorter abdomen.
Typically there are two broods of least skippers during the summer. The first brood is from the middle of June to the middle of July. The second is late July to late August. In the picture above the skippers are reproducing. Since this pic was taken in early August their offspring would be a part of the second brood.

The pearl crescent is another common butterfly in the upper Midwest. They are called pearl crescents because of a light patch on their wings which is called a pearl. Unfortunately the butterfly in this pic is at the wrong angle for us to get a look at the pearl.
The clouded sulphur is another common butterfly. Since they over winter in their chrysalis they have a very long season. You can see clouded sulphurs from May up into November.
When I first found this butterfly I was surprised and confused. It looked very much like it was an endangered Karner blue butterfly, which are not typically found as far west as South Dakota.
When I got back home and began to go through the picks I looked it up in one of my butterfly field guides, I should have brought a butterfly field guide with even though it was a birding trip. I discovered that this was actually a Melissa blue butterfly.
The Karner blue is an eastern subspecies of the Melissa blue. The Melissa blue is much more wide spread and not threatened like the Karner blue is. This mostly has to do with the fact that the Karner Caterpillar will only eat parts of the lupine plant where the Melissa blue caterpillars eats various members of the pea family. Since the Karner is dependent on the lupine they are more susceptible to population decrease if there is less lupine around. Melissa blues are found in open fields and prairies from California to southwestern Minnesota.