Tuesday, August 20, 2019,
This is a Silver-spotted Skipper I saw at Avalon Park and Preserve in Stony Brook. This subtle beauty is perched upon a Yellow Coneflower, which may be a bit of an anomaly. When I Googled this butterfly, most of the results stated that Silver-spotted Skippers prefer blue, red, pink, or purple flowers and that they rarely visit yellow ones. Maybe this one is color blind. Or, perhaps, it likes thinking outside the box. JK.
JK
I like their little white spots — like they spilled milk on themselves or something. 🙂
These guys seem to be all over — more so now than the little white cabbage butterflies that seemed ubiquitous when we were kids.
It turns out that those Cabbage Whites were accidentally introduced to Canada in the 1860’s and quickly spread over North America. And I kinda like them. 🙁
As for these Skippers, I like them too. JK.
Do they seem to be around less now — the Cabbage Whites? I seem to recall they were always around, the most common butterfly it seemed. Now the Skippers seem to be. I like them both too.
No, I don’t believe that there are any less of the Cabbage Whites. I see them all the time. I don’t know if there are more Skippers now than in the past, I sure do notice them more than I used to. There are several species of Skippers around here but from what I’ve read, there are tons of them in the tropics. JK.
Ah. Good to know. I’d hate to think of the little Cabbage guys fading out.
The caterpillar of the Cabbage Whites is considered an agricultural pest, so as pretty as they are, not everyone loves them. JK.