Brown elfin
The brown elfin is a tiny brown butterfly, small enough to sit on your fingertip. It is one of the first butterflies to fly in spring. Its caterpillars like to eat the flowers and berries of blueberry bushes and their relatives.
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Fun facts
Its wings are only about 2 to 3 centimetres from tip to tip.
It turns into a pupa in the fallen leaves under its food plant and spends the winter that way.
The grown-up butterflies fly for only about a month, from early May to early June.
The first one was collected way back in 1827.
Most asked questions about Brown elfin
?How big is the brown elfin?
It is tiny, with wings only about 2 to 3 centimetres across.
?What does the brown elfin eat?
The butterfly drinks nectar. The caterpillars eat flowers and berries of plants like blueberries.
?When can you see a brown elfin?
In spring, from early May to early June.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Callophrys augustinus
- Named by
- Westwood, 1852
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Lycaenidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Lycaenidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Western elfin
Where the facts come from
- Callophrys augustinus (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 Callophrys_augustinus_5975.JPG : Walter Siegmund (talk) derivative work: Berichard ( talk ). 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 hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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