Essex skipper
The Essex skipper is a small orange-brown butterfly with a big furry body. It darts quickly over grassy meadows in the middle of summer. The tips of its feelers are black underneath, as if it had dipped them in ink.
How big is it?
How wide are its wings?
How big is Essex skipper compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It looks almost the same as the small skipper. The way to tell them apart is the black underside of its feeler tips.
In Britain nobody noticed it until 1889, because it looked so much like its cousin.
It came to North America by accident in 1910, and now in some places there it is the most common skipper.
The mum lays her eggs in a row on grass stems, and they stay there all winter.
Before turning into a butterfly, the caterpillar ties leaves together with silk to make a little shelter.
Most asked questions about Essex skipper
?How big is the Essex skipper?
Its wings are about 2.5 to 2.9 centimetres from tip to tip.
?How can you tell an Essex skipper from a small skipper?
Look at the tips of the feelers. In the Essex skipper they are black underneath, in the small skipper orange or brown.
?When can you see Essex skippers?
The butterflies fly in July and August.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Thymelicus lineola
- Group
- Butterflies
- Family
- Hesperiidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Lepidoptera > Hesperiidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia, North America
- Also known as
- European skipper
Where the facts come from
- Essex 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 Charles J. Sharp. 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.
Monarch butterfly
Peacock butterfly
Blue morpho
Old World swallowtail
Small white
Eastern tiger swallowtail
Western flower thrips
Cowboy beetle
Margined calligrapher
Red-legged grasshopper
Horse-chestnut leaf miner
Pill millipede_male.jpg){kind=link}