The Grass Skippers are so named because they all lay their eggs on grasses, or grass-like plants (sedges, reeds, cane). The majority are small, fast-flying, often bright orange, though they also come in browns and blacks. For butterfliers, they provide the most difficult identification challenges, which is why they are either loved or hated (or both at once). If you are new to this game, you may want to learn all the butterflies first, and only then attempt the skippers. We have recorded twenty-four species of grass skippers on Crowley's Ridge. We still make more mistakes than we like to admit.
This is the Clouded Skipper, very common in gardens where it haunts the shadows, which perhaps is why its colors are so subdued. Note that black line down the center of the hind wing, with lighter color on each side. That will identify any small dark skipper you see as being this species.
Also note the checkered wing fringes, and the white spot behind the antennal club
Fresh individuals have purple icing on either side of that black line. They sometimes completely disappear inside flowers.
The female Clouded Skippers have white spotting above, the males almost none.
The Least Skipper is a very tiny orange skipper with a slow weak flight usually in amongst the vegetation. They sometimes occur in large numbers.
Sometimes you see a flowering plant or bush with a Least Skipper on virtually every flower. When you do, invariably you will see one or two hanging down limply under a flower. If you investigate, it usually means an Ambush Bug has captured it. Notice here a unique marking: The underside of the forewing is black. Click on the magnifying glass to get a close-up of the gargoyle-like Ambush Bug.
The male Fiery Skipper: bright yellow orange with a scattering of black dots. This skipper is common in meadows, and is one of the fast flyers.
Fiery Skipper, male.
The female Fiery is duller, with heavier spotting, the spots seeming to outline a pattern of crescents.
Fiery Skipper, female.
Fiery Skippers.
Here is a typical grass skipper resting position: The hind wings are flat to the ground, the forewings half way up. I have taken this photo from a little bit over to the side, and from this angle we can see the upper side of the left hind wing, and the upper side of the right forewing. This is the male Fiery Skipper. The trailing edges of the wings are like a landscape of tall sharp peaks. The thick black stigma (male sex gland) appears to rise up in three steps from the body to the outer corner of the wing.
Here is the upper side of the female Fiery Skipper. This confusing pattern has the added difficulty of being a standard female skipper pattern. So here is the major skipper ID challenge: male and female of the species are often marked differently from each other on the underside. They are always marked differently above. Therefore to learn to identify just one species, you must learn four different patterns: male above, male below, female above, female below.
The Whirlabout (named for making a sudden flight straight up, then looping around and returning) is a rare late season visitor from the south. The male, as here, is similar to the Fiery male, but on the upperside of the hind wing (left side) the brown band along the trailing edge is much smoother than it is on the Fiery, without the effect of numerous sharp mountain peaks.
The Tawny-edged Skipper is dingy from below, but you can usually glimpse that the leading edge of the forewing is very contrastingly bright.
Some Tawny-edged Skippers have a strong hind-wing postmedian band.
From above on the male Tawny-edge the forewing is black except for the orange leading edge. The stigma is a thin bar coming out from the middle, and enclosing a little square of orange.
Here is the female Tawny-edged Skipper from above.
The Crossline Skipper I find very tricky to identify. From below it is dingy like the Tawny-edge, but the leading edge of the forewing is less contrasty.
This is the same individual, showing its upper side (which is helpful: Many skippers refuse to show you both sides). This individual appears to be a Crossline female. There is the blaze along the leading edge, but the upper wing is otherwise mostly dark
Crossline Skippers often show a line of white spots on the hind wing, and the head is often yellowish.
This is the same individual from above. This is a male. His stigma has a bit of yellow on both sides, and gets thinner towards the body.
Here's a very dark Crossline Skipper, with a rather greenish head.
We had to follow him for a while before he gave us a grudging, but confirming, peek at his upper side.
The Southern Broken-Dash is a rich red-brown with a figure 3 on its underside. Note: the fringe on the forewing is gray, on the hind wing orange.
The Southern Broken-Dash male has black upper forewings with an orange leading edge, and a couple of orange spots within the black. Note again the color of the fringes.
The Northern Broken-Dash also has the figure 3 on the hind wing (or a trace of it), but the skipper itself is brown, and the fringes on both fore and hind wings are the same color. It very often appears side by side with the Southern Broken-Dash on flowers.
Northern Broken-Dash male. Note the fringes are the same color.
Northern Broken-Dash, female.
Little Glassywing. Note the white box on the upper side of the forewing, and the white spot behind the antennal clubs.
The Little Glassywing often has a line of white spots on the hind wing
Here is a better spot line.
Little Glassywing from above.
The Sachem (next to the Fiery Skipper) is the most abundant skipper in grassy fields. This is the male, which may have brown marks outlining a pale crescent shape, as here, or may have virtually no marking at all. But note the square brown box about midway along the inner edge of the hindwing. That box will be there no matter what the other markings.
The female Sachem has a much stronger crescent marking on the hind wing, and also has the brown box
If the male Sachem opens his wings, he can be recognized by his thick black stigma from as far away as you can see him.
The female Sachem from above has a number of large spots. What is distinctive is, some of the spots are orange, some are white.
Now comes a little group of skippers that are closely associated with water. First is the Delaware Skipper, almost always found along a stream in a wetland. With its wings closed it is an unmarked bright orange.
From above, its veins are outlined in black. On the male there is a little black V (the cell-end bar) that seems to have black veins radiating from it.
The female Delaware Skipper has much heavier marking, which seems to leave two cells trapped within the black.
The Zabulon Skipper is a beauty, with brown on the outer third of the wings, a broad yellow band through the middle, then brown again at the base (though right at the base, the brown encircles a small yellow area).
The male Zabulon lands on a plant stalk, or the leaf of some aquatic plant, and guards a territory, chasing off whatever creature comes near. The orange upper wing has a wide brown border which, near the apex, surrounds a small orange circle.
While the male is brash and aggressive, the female Zabulon, who does not look anything like him, is quiet and slips around deep in the foliage. She features soft pastel colors, and (useful for identification) her hind wing is partially outlined in white.
The white wing outline shows up from a distance.
And you can also see it from above on the Zabulon female.
This is the male Yehl Skipper, a handsome and rather scarce inhabitant of wet meadows. The pattern here on the hind wing is three spots with a faint ray going between them, on an orange ground color.
Above, the Yehl has dark brown wings with bold orange markings, and, on the male, an orange leading edge.
The female Yehl Skipper is browner, but with the same three spots with a faint ray between.
Here is the female Yehl from above. The upper side of the hind wing (left side here) shows a magnification of the three spots and the ray. There is no yellow leading edge on the forewing.
I have a hard time, sometimes, separating this species, the Broad-winged Skipper, from the Yehl Skipper. On this one the ray going between the spots seems stronger, but that may not be a consistent difference. Generally there are four spots and a ray. The Broad-winged is a bit bigger than the Yehl, with longer wings.
The Broad-winged Skipper habitat is significantly different. They are almost always found very close to water's edge, usually lakes or sloughs with a dense growth of six-foot tall reeds or other similarly tall aquatic grass growing out of water. Unlike most skippers, they have a slow languid flight, in amongst the tall spears of grass, which they leave only to nectar on nearby flowers.
The species appears to be widespread in this sort of habitat throughout the state. There are good populations in Crittenden and Mississippi Counties just to the east of Crowley's Ridge. Stragglers from there occasionally wander up onto the Ridge, where it is not normally found.
Here is the upperside of a Broad-winged Skipper, showing very clearly the ray bisecting the spots.
Here is the Dion Skipper, another of the "rayed" skippers. This individual, a female, only showed me its upperside.
Just once, just as I clicked the shutter, it flipped its wings up momentarily, giving me this blurry glimpse of the underside. The underside is plain orange with one or two rays going through it, similar in appearance to those on a Dukes's Skipper (see the next image).
The Dukes's Skipper has one or two pale rays going the length of the hind wing. A ditch choked with sedges is the habitat.
Like the Broad-winged Skipper, the Dukes's Skipper is a slow leisurely flyer deep in the rank vegetation.
The male Dukes's Skipper has no marking above. It is mainly black with a yellow shoulder.
The female has these two tiny spots.
The Dun Skipper is a quiet visitor to gardens. It is plain brown with virtually no markings, though sometimes the top of its head is bright yellow.
It is just as plain above, though if you look you can make out the stigma on this male.
The female Dun Skipper at least has a couple of tiny spots above.
The Eufala Skipper, a late wanderer here from farther south, is also quite plain, but has at least a little circle of white spots on the upper forewing.
The Eufala Skipper.
After all this plainness, the Dusted Skipper is a spectacular inhabitant of isolated patches of blue stem grass. It has rich brown wings, frosted on the trailing edges, leading edges outlined in white, a white spot near the base of the hind wing, face and eye outlines in shining white.
Dusted Skipper.
Even old and worn, it still has the white spot at the base of the wing, and the black eyes on a white face.
Now we come to Crowley's Ridge's set of four roadside-skippers. Most skippers are small, but roadside-skippers are even smaller. They feature checkered fringes and subtle patterns. It is always pleasing when you are lucky enough to spot one. This first is called the Pepper and Salt Skipper.
The basic color is creamy or pale brown, and the important ID features are the fringe, so you know it is a roadside (caution: see the Clouded Skipper, which has a checkered fringe, but it is fairly large, and these are tiny), and, inland from the fringe, the five creamy spots that coalesce into a slightly diagonal line on the hind wing. That is the mark of the Pepper and Salt.
Here's how the Pepper and Salt looks from above, but that won't help, as most of the roadsides look like this.
Here is the very fancy Lacewing Roadside-Skipper, with its spiderweb pattern. It's considered sort of a rarity, but it is common on Crowley's Ridge. It comes in various colors. Here's a purply brown one.
Here's a dark brown one.
Here's a light brown one.
Here's a golden brown one.
Here it is from above, unless I accidentally put the Pepper and Salt here again.
This is the Common Roadside-Skipper. It's an old one with its fringes worn off, but the important identification features are still there. First, the four preapical white spots are in the shape of a triangle, broad at the top, a point at the bottom. This is very distinctive. Next, there is silver frosting at the end of the front wing, and for about one third or one half of the hind wing. (If the frosting went all the way in to the base of the wing, that would be a different species.)
On this Common Roadside-Skipper all the frosting has worn off, but you can still see very plainly where it was on the hind wing. The white spotting on the forewing makes a very good triangle. The shape of the four white spots together is almost enough by itself to identify the species. A fourth species of road-side skipper is found on Crowley's Ridge: The Carolina Road-side Skipper, an orange-yellow species which we have seen, but have not yet managed to photograph.
The Ocola Skipper is a late season wanderer up from the south. It is immediately recognizable by the very long forewings, extending well beyond the hind wings. Note also that the last third of the fore and hind wing is slightly darker. That will confirm your identification.
The Ocola Skipper also comes in this white-spotted form.
The Ocola Skipper is the twenty-fourth and (so far) last grass skipper we have recorded on Crowley's Ridge. For additional Grass Skipper species, see the album "Other Arkansas Butterflies."
