Scalloped Sooty Wing Butterfly

Along the roadsides, all the tall-stemmed daisies are drab and fading now, but patches of furry pink rabbit’s-foot clover have begun to appear, and clouds of dusty-white Queen Anne’s Lace. And there are still lots of dandelions. In one patch of dandelions, a small dark butterfly was fluttering and feeding, and it stayed on a yellow blossom long enough for a long, close look. It was patterned in several shades of dark copper, with a shimmering sheen, and sooty-black, with three tiny white flecks in the upper part of the upper wings. The wing edges were scalloped and lightly fringed. When I looked it up later, I learned that it was a Scalloped Sooty Wing butterfly, a kind of skipper.

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