Little Glassywing
Last year I discovered that the South March Highlands was a great spot to see some of the more uncommon sedge skippers in our region; I have been waiting all summer for July to arrive as I couldn’t wait to return this year! Last year I got my lifer Little Glassywing on July 5th and my lifer Mulberry Wing on July 12th, so I had high hopes for this visit on July 2nd. Though a few days earlier than my visits last year, members of the Ottawa butterfly group had already started reporting sedge skippers elsewhere, and so I was eager to check this under-reported area for the ones I had seen last year. The milkweed patch also hosts hairstreaks, fritillaries, monarchs, sulphurs and many other insect species – I thought for sure I would find something interesting on my visit!
To my disappointment, the milkweeds were not at their prime. The hot, dry weather had caused many of those in flower to wilt, while others still had not bloomed yet. The milkweed blossoms were therefore quite sparse compared to the previous year, and as a result I had to look harder to find any skippers. I was happy when I scared up one small, bright orange skipper out of the grass; when it landed I was able to identify it as a Delaware Skipper. Although it is not one of the sedge skippers, it is one of the species I had seen here last year and hoped to see again this year.
Delaware Skipper
Delaware Skipper
Despite walking through the milkweed patch for a good 20 minutes I saw only one other skipper in the area, which vanished before I could get a good look. Frustrated, I headed over to the small boardwalk to see if any odes or butterflies were present there. I found a big pile of scat on the boardwalk, and three butterflies were busy feeding on it. The first was this Eyed Brown, which flew up into a shrub as I approached before eventually returning to its feculent feast.
Eyed Brown
The other two butterflies were both skippers, and both were ones I had specifically hoped to see! The first was a beautiful Broad-winged Skipper, a sedge skipper whose upper wings show bright orange square spots on a dark background. It was resting on the boardwalk close to the scat:
Broad-winged Skipper
While photographing the Broad-winged Skipper, the Eyed Brown returned to its meal and where it was accompanied by a much smaller, browner butterfly. I initially thought it was a Dun Skipper until I saw the extent of the white markings on the wings – it was a Little Glassywing!
Eyed Brown and Little Glassywing
The Glassywing was very cooperative. It left the scat a few times as a few people walked by, but never flew far away and perched close by where I could find it. The pattern on the upper forewings indicates that this is a female:
Little Glassywing
It was very cooperative for photos, allowing me to get close with the camera after landing on a different shrub nearby.
Little Glassywing
This was the highlight of my visit; even though I returned to the milkweed patch before I left, I still only found one Delaware Skipper, though the wear and markings on the upper forewings indicate it is a different individual than the one photographed above.
I returned the following weekend to see if there had been any new emergences in the days since my July 2nd visit. It was another hot, gorgeous afternoon when I returned on July 10, and while the milkweed was still blooming it was still not as profuse as it had been in 2020. Almost as soon as I started looking for butterflies I found a very dark hairstreak; it was quite tattered as well, and the tattered hindwing made it almost impossible to identify. My best guess is that it is a Banded Hairstreak, though I’ve also seen Hickory Hairstreak in this field.
A Tattered Hairstreak
A small orange skipper and I crossed paths briefly; it landed on a leaf with its wings open, and I got one quick, slightly out-of-focus photo of it before it disappeared. It is still unidentified on iNaturalist, though my best guess is one of the Long Dash/Crossline/Tawny Edged Skippers.
I couldn’t scare anything else up out of the milkweed patch, so I returned to the boardwalk. The scat and the butterflies from last week were gone, but I saw a Northern Water Snake and had some better luck with odes this time. This Four-spotted Skimmer posed nicely for me:
Four-spotted Skimmer
I also came across a spreadwing and was able to identify it as a Northern Spreadwing when viewing the claspers close up in my photos:
Northern Spreadwing
A Belted Whiteface was also in the same area:
Belted Whiteface
A dragonfly perching on a stick much further out over the water caught my attention when it sallied and out returned to the same branch. I was surprised to identify it as a Blue Dasher, as this is a species I’d never seen here before. Indeed, this is the only record in the South March Highlands iNaturalist project I created a few years ago (searches for specific species reported in a project can only be done by using the search bar tool under the Observations Tab, or so it seems).
Blue Dasher
I returned to the milkweed patch to do another sweep for skippers before I left, but found only one. Fortunately, it was one of the ones I had hoped to see – a Dion Skipper. This sedge skipper can be identified by the reddish-brown or reddish-orange hindwings with two golden yellow rays running from the body to the edges of the wing – one along the base of the wing and the other running directly through the middle. Although the adults are most likely to be seen in swamps, open marshes, sedge meadows, and bogs, they are neither widespread nor found in large numbers in our region. This individual was particularly shy; I followed it around for several minutes hoping to get a decent photo.
Dion Skipper
Although these two outings were less a little less exciting than my outings last year due to the small number of milkweeds in bloom and overall number of individual butterflies, I’m happy to have found most of my target species – and to get photos of them. Still, it would have been great to have seen another Mulberry Wing or Northern Broken Dash, as well as the fritillaries, tiger swallowtails and hairstreaks that were present the year before. Every outing is different, every year is different, and as always, it’s just a matter of being in the right place at the right time!
The Pathless Wood 