Skipper ID please

[sahikmet]

Pictures were taken all at Aston Rowant on 10/07/04 Small skipper?

[Pete Eeles]

I'd go for the following:

1. Male Small Skipper. The sex brand is a) present and b) quite long and crooked, and not parallel with the leading edge of the forewing.

2. Female Small Skipper. Quite hard to distinguish from a female Essex Skipper. I'm going on the relative-light colouring of the veins.

3. Even harder to tell. But I'd go for female Small Skipper.

Cheers,

- Pete

[sahikmet]

Thanks Pete

Sezar

[Roger Gibbons]

Assuming these are all photos of the same butterfly, it looks like a male small skipper (T. sylvestris) – the sex brand (almost invisible in the middle photo - is it the same butterfly?) and body shape make it almost certainly a male and the underside of the antennal tip (not very clear in these photos) does not look dark enough for an essex skipper (T. lineolus). The sex brand looks to be too long and thick for lineolus and it looks too “clean” around the margins. I’m no expert on these species, though.

[sahikmet]

If I remember correctly, on the day whole area was full of what I thought mainly small skippers, there were 50+ at the top field of Aston Rowant. 40X100 metres at the most. Some appeared to be larger and darker than others. I did manage to take alot of pictures. All the pictures are of different butterflies. I also not in any way an expert, just keen to learn.
Many thanks for your input Roger.

Best wishes

Sezar

[hjalava]

Hello everybody,
In my opinion, number 2 is a Thymelicus lineola male.

[sahikmet]

Thanks Harry, It shows the difficulties of ID.

[JKT]

This is a fun triplet!

I would vote number two as male T. sylvestris and three as T. lineola of unknown gender. There seems to be enough yellow in the clubs of number two, but not in the number three. For the same reason I agree that number one is also male T. sylvestris.

Juha