Common branded skipper
The common branded skipper is a small, fast orange and brown butterfly. Under its back wings it has lots of shiny white spots, like little silver coins. Its body is big and strong for a butterfly, so it can fly a long way.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Most of its body weight is in its chest and tummy, full of strong muscles for flying.
It spends about 7 months of its one-year life as a tiny egg, waiting for spring.
Mothers often lay their eggs near ant hills, where the grass is short and warm.
The caterpillar builds a little tent out of silk and grass blades to hide in.
In Britain it lives only on chalk hills in the south, but there are more of them again now.
Most asked questions about Common branded skipper
?Why is it called silver-spotted skipper?
Because of the shiny white spots under its back wings. Skippers got their name from their quick, hopping flight.
?What does the common branded skipper eat?
The butterfly visits flowers, and the caterpillar eats grass such as sheep's fescue.
?When can you see it?
The grown-up butterflies fly from July to September.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Hesperia comma
- Named by
- Linnaeus, 1758
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Hesperiidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Hesperiidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa, North America
- Also known as
- Silver-spotted skipper, Pearl skipper
Where the facts come from
- Hesperia comma (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 Charles J. Sharp. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same 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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