Skippers

My camera may be dead, but I still have a ton of photos from the field trips I went on these past 5 weeks. I found these butterflies, for example, feeding on mud near a small river in the Rio Sapo area, in northeastern El Salvador last week. Click on the photos for close-up views.

It was cloudy and there wasn't much light, but these critters were so busy feeding on the nutrients they find in mud, that they were oblivious to my very close presence. At times the lens was only two or three inches above their heads.

The white skipper is a Common Enops (Polyctor polyctor) which, despite its name, certainly is not common in Mexico, although it may be more common in Central America. I've seen it at other sites in the region.

The pretty blue one is Aztec Bentwing (Cycloglypha thrasibulus), fairly common throughout the region.

The gray skippers are male Dusted Spurwings (Antigonus erosus), and in these photos the brown ones are also males, only older and more worn. The females are all brown, with two small transparent windows in the wings. Rare in southern Texas, it is often abundant in Mexico and Central America. Their flight is fast and erratic, and usually just inches above the ground. It's rare to find this species perched or flying more than one meter or three feet above the ground. It's been my experience that aggregations such as this one often consist largely or even solely of males. I don't know why that is.