New oasis butterfly species

Before I get into the new butterfly story, here's a video taken from that drone on Aug 25th. (See post for that day.) Thanks to Abe Moore for taking it and sharing it with me.



OK, the skipper story. I was bopping around the hummingbird garden with my camera hung on my shoulder. Not going to let it out of my reach after missing a lifer yesterday. I saw a very white checkered skipper sort of butterfly. Should have snapped a pic immediately instead of trying to see it better through binos. So it disappeared and no pic. I was whining to Mac about losing it so he started looking for it as I described it. He called me over to a cluster of checkered-looking skippers puddling near where he was set up photographing hummers. So we shot pics of the puddlers.

Later when he showed me his, there was an Erichson's White-Skipper among his shots. (I saw that species before one time in Marathon but got only a bad shot of it. Never had it at the oasis before.)  Looking through my piddly puddling shots, with Brian's help, it turned out there were two, but only ventral views (the underside of the wings), which I was unable to recognize as Erichson's. Since Mac took the same shot, only better, I'm going to use his group photo here instead of mine.

Here's a shot I took of a Desert Checkered-Skipper that I like.

And Brian says this next shot by me is of a White Checkered-Skipper.

And now for the Mac-aroos! Here's Mac's Erichson's White-Skipper shot, without which we probably wouldn't have identified them in the group photo.

Golden-headed Scallopwing by Mac

If I haven't left you a bit dazed and confused, let me add that I'm positive that original white skipper I saw today, but didn't get a photo of, was a Tropical Checkered-Skipper. But until I get a photo, it doesn't count.