About Darters and Skippers

Hesperiidae are small to medium-sized butterflies with an average wingspan around 30 mm. They are usually drab brown or orange in colour. Skippers differ in several important ways from other butterflies. Skippers have antennae clubs hooked backward like a crochet hook, whilst butterflies have club-like tips to their antennae. Skippers also have generally stockier bodies.

This skipper is on the larval food plant, Lomandra sp. Photo: Robert Whyte

Orange Palm-dart

The Orange Palm-dart Cephrenes augiades is medium-sized with a large body and relatively small orange-yellow wings. They fly in a very rapid and jerky style, which has earned them the name skippers. It lays eggs on palm trees. The caterpillars are green, after hatching they lay silk on the palm leaf, the silk shrinks and pulls the two side of the leaf together to from the shelter. The caterpillar turns into a pupa within its palm shelter. As it forms the pupa, it creates a quantity of white chalky powder. The pupa has a length of about 30 mm. After about two weeks, the butterfly emerges.

Photo:Derek Boddington

Skipper Butterfly

Possibly the Symmomus Skipper Trapezites symmomus. The adult Symmomus Skipper butterfly is brown, with a few white and yellow markings on the wings, with a wingspan of about 50 mm. Found mainly along the eastern side of mainland Australia including in southern Queensland and New South Wales. The species is considered to be endangered.

Photo: Mark Crocker