fly to flowers | Winged Beauty Butterflies

When you hike trails, fields, forest, wetlands, disturbed land and almost anywhere, you’ll see skippers. They embody a palette of browns, yellows, whites, oranges and other colors.

The Grass skippers are especially abundant. Our Peck’s skipper (Polites pecks) prefers sunny weather and as with most skippers, is nowhere to be found if the sun is not present. When seen, they perch on leaves for a while, fly to nectaring flowers and when they fly they are fast and difficult to follow, staying close to the ground and flying in unpredictable patterns.

The thing about Peck’s skippers is this: When you are working in the field during May through August, they are there also and predictable in an otherwise unpredictable world.

Jeffrey

August and 3 Comma butterflies have settled on a workable arrangement for all to share scat set on the Nichol Road trail at Raccoon Creek State Park.

Preferring to be at woods edge, this section of trail is ideal Comma habitat, with a small stream running just 15 feet from this spot.

The Eastern Comma (Polygonia comma) on the left bears the browns and consistent markings that are pretty reliable. The Comma on the right I identify as a Gray Comma (Polygonia progne). Agreed?

Commas keep you company along certain stretches of trail. They much prefer shade to direct sunlight. Very, very rarely do you see them fly to flowers.

Commas are vividly colored when ‘fresh’ and wear over the weeks that they fly. They are examples of the species of butterflies that like puppies, exude ‘personality.’

Difficult to photograph, as we’ve noted before, our subjects here were so fixed on their purpose that they allowed my belly to the ground slow approach. The things I do for a good shot!

Jeffrey