Skipper in October

Feeds:: Posts; Comments

Skipper in October

October 10, 2014 by Mike Powell

It’s a gray and gloomy day with intermittent rain—I feed the need for some color. This little skipper butterfly was busily at work last week on some very colorful flowers and I was able to catch him in action with his proboscis extended.

I am not sure what kind of skipper this is (there are more than 3500 species of skippers worldwide), but it looks a little like one that a reader identified for me as a Peck’s Skipper (Polites peckius). I must confess, though, that many skippers look very similar to me, so my identification is very tentative.

Capturing the butterfly with my macro lens was not too much of a problem, but I had a real problem in processing these shots because of some super bright highlights coming of the yellow flowers. I ended up darkening the highlights and desaturating the color in order to restore some detail to those flowers. I am not sure if I am happy with the results and might choose to process them differently another time. (The RAW images are still intact.)

Posted in Butterflies, Flowers, Gardening, Insects, Macro Photography, Nature, Photography | Tagged Alexandria VA, Canon 50D, green spring gardens, Peck's Skipper, Polites peckius, skipper, Tamron 180mm macro lens | 9 Comments

9 Responses

on October 10, 2014 at 9:08 am | Reply Victor Rakmil

Great shots.
on October 10, 2014 at 12:18 pm | Reply naturesnippets

Enjoyed the pictures. The butterflies are almost nonexistent in my yard. The skipper looks like a female sachem to me.
- on October 10, 2014 at 12:48 pm | Reply Mike Powell
  
  I defer to experts on the identification of the little skipper and I admit that I don’t have a clue about how to tell the gender of these little butterflies.
  - on October 10, 2014 at 1:33 pm naturesnippets
    
    Skippers are a real challenge!! at least most of them.
on October 10, 2014 at 4:06 pm | Reply Dan Antion

Nice capture
on October 11, 2014 at 8:24 am | Reply New Hampshire Garden Solutions

I love that second shot. Not only can I not identify the butterfly, I don’t know what the flower is either.
on October 11, 2014 at 5:05 pm | Reply Birder's Journey

This certainly did add color to the day – nice image. I know what you mean about the highlights on a bright flower….Tricky.
on October 14, 2014 at 10:43 am | Reply Marie Keates

Great action shots there. I found bright red flowers the hardest to photograph, but then I only use an iPhone camera.
- on October 16, 2014 at 5:12 am | Reply Mike Powell
  
  Thanks. I think that red flowers are a challenge for all digital sensors, not just for an iPhone. I took some bee shots on a bright red flower and don’t know how to adjust them to make the color look normal.