Ahoy, Skippers!

The Skippers in the family Hesperiidae are small, fast, confusing, and perhaps not even butterflies. But we will leave that to the taxonomists…Also, they are all over the place: walking through a meadow or even a semi-feral lawn now can stir them up. A subsection of the Skippers, the Grass Skippers, have a characteristic “jet plane position” perch in which the hindwings are opened further than the forewings, as above. This one, with the tell-tale black stigma, is a male Sachem (Atalopedes campestris).This is a female Tawny-edged Skipper (Polites themistocles), I think. One detail to note here is that the clubs of the antennae are bent, characteristic of Hesperiidae.Silver-spotted Skipper (Epargyreus clarus), almost twice as big as the above species and easier to ID with the silver-white mark on the hindwings.