Don't know what it is and I'm just learning this speed shot stuff.
I caught this shot this am
This is a closer more closed shot.
Sugarweed, that's a long-tailed skipper. Very pretty indeed! :-)
Very nice photo. Great colored moth.
Not a moth, it is a butterfly!
Thank you kennedyh. I thought it was too. I really shouldn't have posted it. It was really pretty flying with iridescent teal spots on it's wings I think. (I've slept since then.lol)
What amaizes me is I have the top picture as my desktop of the day. I use a Canon powershot A75 and I am just blown away at the depth of this photo. Not quite as good reproduced here.
Sidney
It is certainly a beautiful butterfly. salvia_lover correctly named it as the Long-tailed Skipper Urbanus teleus. I was not lucky enough to see one in my brief visit to the USA.
kennedy --
aren't skippers really their own thing? Neither moths NOR butterflies?
Something about how they hold their wings when resting:
Skippers, up like a sail;
Moths, down and folded;
Butterflies, down and open...
Of course, SW's is not following that "rule" -- therefore MsM's misnomer would be understandable, eh?
~'spin!~
Veined White Skipper (Heliopetes arsalte), holding wings up like it should:
http://www.owlspleasure.com/crbugs/Veined%20White-Skipper.jpg
The skippers are certainly mostly quite unlike other butterflies in the way they fold their wings, although that does not apply to all of them by any means. They are nevertheless classed as butterflies and all my butterfly books, from Europe, America and Australia all include the skipper family, the Hesperiidae
I'm a newby to serious butterfly observation. My neighbors think I'm some kind of spy walking around with a camera all the time. The neighborhood kook waundering aimlessly down the alley.(;>)
Great pic! I'm so jealous. I've not seen a LT skipper yet. The skippers I have are smaller but LOUD. I catch myself ducking when they are whirring by me, just to find it's a little butterfly.
Thank you, you're one of my Mentors here.
~'spin!~, that Veined White Skipper has its winged closed in the same way as most butterflies. The unique style of the skippers, mainly the very small skippers, is to keep their fore wings spread flat, but with their hind wings folded vertically. Here is a picture of a White Grass-dart Taractrocera papyria here in Australia, which shows this strange way of folding the wings.
Woops! I got that the wrong way round! The skippers close their wings, with the hind wings spread flat and the fore wings folded vertically.
Now I am so confused! Guess I better get to attracting and watching butterflies wholesale like. I have seeds for Onalee's mexican sunflowers, plus at least one kind of milkweed... unfortunately going on winter here, such as winter is in So.california. Can't think it is the right time to see many butterflies, but not too soon to start PLANNING on seeing them!
Re: skippers. I never noticed one set of wings was up, one was down. In fact, I never conceived they controlled them independently! Gosh, all the things I *don't* know!
~'spin!~
And Spin I am the opposite. I never noticed that there was a pattern to different types of butterflies folding their wings a certain way. I just assumed all butterflies could move them in various different ways....I've seen all the methods of folding wings mentioned and detailed above and just thought all butterflies could do all these things.
I learn something new here every day :-)
-Julie