#burnsius

A small skipper resting delicately on the budding tip of a flower cluster! By now, skippers have long since returned to the fields, but at the time I photographed this, this individual was my first checkered-skipper of the year. I forget how small the species of this genus are until I have to chase a small, flashing dot across a flower field in blinding sunlight and struggle to keep up. Luckily for me, these guys don't hide like moths do, preferring to sit in sunlit areas and show off their patterns, making them easy to re-locate!

Burnsius communis on Chrysanthemum x morifolium 'Ryan's Pink' / Common Checkered-Skipper on Ryan's Pink Garden Mum at the Sarah P. Duke Gardens at Duke University in Durham, NC

A small skipper drinking its fill from the season's final flowers! This was one of the last skippers I saw this past season, though it wasn't my last butterfly. Common Buckeyes (Junonia coenia) have a pretty long-lasting season, and I was still seeing them well past the disappearance of other butterfly species. I'm not sure what they were finding to eat, if anything, because there were very few flowers around, but they were clearly making do. I'm looking forward to seeing them again this summer!

A tiny skipper perched on the tip of a grass seed cluster! This individual sure took its time to settle down, fluttering in circles for minutes without landing, but it was quite the good model after it found a spot that checked all its boxes. Skippers can be quite picky about their perches, always trying to find the ideal sunlit perch to show off their wings. This one couldn't find any sun, but it at least got to show off a little!

A little skipper posing for me in the sunlight! This is either a Common Checkered-skipper (B. communis) or a White Checkered-skipper (B. albezens), though distribution data points towards B. communis. The two species are notably hard to visually distinguish from one another in the field, though in some cases it can be done, as B. communis males occasionally have patterning that B. albezens does not (this is not one of those individuals). Either way, this is a male, as males of this genus have a pale blue abdomen that fades slightly into the wings, while females are black/dark brown instead! They're quite hard to photograph unless you can get them from afar because while they do like to land and spread their wings, they spook quite easily to movement in their proximity. This guy let me get some lovely pictures of him, though, as he spread his wings in the sun!