Propertius duskywing

The Propertius duskywing is a small brown and grey skipper butterfly with a stout body and hooked tips on its feelers. Its mottled wings look like bark and dead leaves, so it is hard to spot. It zips around oak woods with quick, darting flight.

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Fun facts
It is one of the most common skippers in California.
Most of them stay within about a hundred metres of where they hatched for their whole life.
The caterpillar hides in a little silk nest and comes out to eat mostly at night.
In winter the caterpillar sleeps inside folded oak leaves that fall to the ground.
Males sit on low plants and dash out to check every butterfly that flies past.
Most asked questions about Propertius duskywing
?What does the Propertius duskywing eat?
The adults drink nectar from wildflowers. The caterpillars eat oak leaves, especially Garry oak.
?How big is the Propertius duskywing?
Its wings measure about 35 to 45 millimetres from tip to tip.
?Where does the Propertius duskywing live?
Along the west coast of North America, in open oak woods.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Erynnis propertius
- Named by
- Scudder & Burgess, 1870
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Hesperiidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Hesperiidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Erynnis propertius (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 S. Rae (back from hols, catching up) from Scotland, UK. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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