Silver-spotted skipper
The silver-spotted skipper is a brown butterfly with a shiny silver-white patch on the underside of each back wing. It darts around quickly, which is why it is called a skipper. It is one of the best-known skippers in North America.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its caterpillar cuts and folds a leaf with silk to build itself a little leaf house.
A caterpillar builds about five different leaf houses as it grows bigger.
The caterpillar is yellow with a dark head that has two big orange spots, like fake eyes.
It almost never visits yellow flowers.
At night or on cloudy days it hangs upside down under a leaf with its silver spot showing.
Most asked questions about Silver-spotted skipper
?What does the silver-spotted skipper eat?
Adults drink nectar. The caterpillars eat leaves of plants in the pea family.
?Why is it called a skipper?
Because it flies in a quick, darting, skipping way.
?Where can I see a silver-spotted skipper?
In fields, gardens and forest edges across most of North America.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Epargyreus clarus
- Named by
- Cramer, 1775
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Hesperiidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Hesperiidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Epargyreus clarus (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Weed, Clarence Moores. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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