Fiery skipper
The fiery skipper is a small, quick butterfly. The boys are bright orange or yellow, like a little flame, and the girls are dark brown. It zips around in fast, darting flights, which makes it hard to catch.
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Fun facts
When it rests, it holds its wings in a funny triangle shape to soak up the sunshine.
Its caterpillar is greenish pink-grey with a black head and a thin neck.
In warm weather it grows from an egg into a butterfly in just over three weeks.
Its tiny eggs are white at first and then turn pale blue.
It arrived in Hawaii around 1970 and has spread to almost all the islands.
Most asked questions about Fiery skipper
?Is the fiery skipper a butterfly or a moth?
It is a butterfly, from a group called skippers because of their quick, skipping flight.
?What does the fiery skipper eat?
Its caterpillars eat lawn grasses such as Bermuda grass.
?How big is the fiery skipper?
It is about 2.5 centimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Hylephila phyleus
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Hesperiidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Hesperiidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America, Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Fiery skipper (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 Regular Daddy. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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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