Essex Skipper

Eggs are laid in strings on the stems of grasses where they remain over the winter. The Essex skipper's favoured foodplant is cock's-foot (Dactylis glomerata), and it rarely uses the small skipper's favoured foodplant Yorkshire fog. Essex skippers' other foods include creeping soft grass (Holcus mollis), couch grass (Elymus repens), timothy-grass (Phleum pratense), meadow foxtail (Alopecurus pratensis), false brome (Brachypodium sylvaticum) and tor-grass (Brachypodium pinnatum). This skipper's caterpillars emerge in the spring and feed until June before forming shelters from leaves tied with silk at the base of the foodplant to pupate. Adults fly from July through August. Like most skippers, they are fairly strictly diurnal, though individuals are very rarely encountered during the night. This skipper's oval eggs are pale greenish-yellow, flattened above and below with slightly depressed tops. Caterpillars are green, with yellowish incisions between their rings; each with a dorsal, darker green stripe and yellow lateral lines. A larva's head is pale brown striped with darker brown. Their elongate chrysalids are yellowish-green, and each has a dark dorsal stripe seen in caterpillars.