Subject: Moth ID, please
Location: SW Nassau County, NY
December 27, 2013 7:08 am
I shot this last August on Long Island, NY.
Love seeing the reach of the proboscis?
Signature: Carl
Hi Carl,
This is not a moth, but rather a Skipper, a member of the butterfly family Hesperiidae, a group that has traditionally been considered an evolutionary transition between the more primitive moths and the more advanced butterflies. Alas, we are not very good at species or genus identification of Skippers, which according to BugGuide are: “Generally small, mostly orange or brown butterflies with short fat bodies, hooked antennae and rapid, skipping flight. Some species (chiefly Spreadwing Skippers, subfamily Pyrginae) hold their wings in a single flat plane, many others hold hind wings flat and forewings at an angle.”
Update
Thanks to a comment from Richard Stickney, we now know that this is Peck’s Skipper, Polites peckius, which is pictured on BugGuide.
This is a Peck’s Skipper, a common species over the Northeast and some of the South. Nice photo!
Thanks for the ID. We will create a link to BugGuide.