More Umber Skipper Eggs Again. . . Wild Sourced Ones

Today we were surprised to discover a ton of Umber Skipper (Poanes melane) eggs laid on various wild grasses in Albany's Eastside Permaculture Garden!

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Umber Skippers, at least at this time of year, are by far the most common butterfly in Albany. There are at least two or three (often much more) at any reasonably good garden at a time on any given day. Its a mystery how we have never found their young after all these years until today, especially considering how common their host plants also are. 

In fact, stepping upon the Umber Skipper eggs on some grasses at the garden was quite lucky; we weren't even looking for them! We had actually went to the garden to take pictures of the Common Checkered Skipper (Pyrgus communis) that eclosed today. We wanted to take a few pictures of it in a more natural setting on some mallows or grasses (though nothing would look really realistic since it was raining today!) when we noticed a bunch of large, pearly eggs on the grass we were taking pictures of it on! 

Upon closer examination, we couldn't get a good confirmation that these were Umber Skipper eggs, especially since we couldn't even identify the particular type of grass they were laid on at the time. But after looking around for a while and coming up with 46 eggs (It seemed like wherever there was grass, there were tons and tons of them!), we also managed to step upon three first instar caterpillars that were most likely Umber Skipper larvae. What a great find this was.

For future reference, most of these eggs were laid on the undersides of the grass blades. There were never more than a few eggs laid in a spot at one time. Because of their very large size and bright white color (at least, the fresh ones; as they develop they become slightly yellow), they were actually extremely easy to spot. And, based on the fact that they don't require any host plant stimulus whatsoever to lay eggs as seen with the two wild caught females that laid some for us in an empty tank, it probably isn't that much of a surprise that they will lay a bit haphazardly in the wild. . . we found several eggs that were laid on wood and some on what clearly weren't host plants (both of these places were still very close to the actual host grass, though). 

- Brian