Just Can't Get Enough of the Butterflies

With the swallowtails and other large, colorful butterflies, it is easy to overlook the small butterflies, especially the skippers.  Here are a few little butterflies that are found around here.

Western Pygmy Blue

This is a Western Pygmy Blue (Brephidium exilis) drinking nectar from a hairyseed bahia flower in the alley behind our house.  The Western Pygmy Blue is the smallest butterfly in North America (actual size ½ to ¾ in.), but around here you can see literally thousands of them swarming the four-wing saltbush plants that their larvae use as food and that grow wild in our area.  Unfortunately, the city loves to spray the four-winged saltbush (and everything else that grows wild) with Roundup, as part of an ill-conceived “weed eradication program.”  For some reason, the Roundup trucks keep missing the hairyseed bahia plants that this butterfly was drinking from.  This is truly fortunate, because they must spray thousands of gallons of Roundup in our neighborhood alone, even though it has now been classified as a “probable carcinogen” by the World Health Association.

Bronze Roadside-Skipper

The Bronze Roadside-Skipper (Amblyscirtes aenus) looks very plain until seen close up.  I love the bronze color of its wings, and the fuzzy white head with a black “Mohawk.”  This one was very friendly and posed for me on an apple tree before eventually flying off to find nectar.

Fiery Skipper

This Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus) wasn’t interested in posing at all.  It was hiding in a clump of rosemary.  These tiny Skippers are often found on lawns, as they lay their eggs on common lawn grasses like Bermuda, crabgrass, and St. Augustine.