Mystery Egg 2 Hatches: Common Checkered Skipper Confirmed

Our suspicions have been confirmed that the second type of egg we discovered on wild mallow (Malva) were laid by the Common Checkered Skipper (Pyrgus communis).

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For the past few days, we have been finding many eggs on wild mallow (Malva) that we could not identify today. One of the eggs -- mystery egg 1 -- hatched into a Gray Hairstreak (Strymon melinus) yesterday; it looked like a tiny and slightly hairy blob. The other eggs, mystery egg 2, although spherical and adorned with vertical ridges and look like typical skipper (Hesperiidae) eggs, were not definitively different from mystery egg 2. So even though we did conclude that we had two different kinds of eggs, we still needed to see a difference in the hatchlings to completely convince us.

Today a mystery egg 2 finally hatched into something that is distinctively skipper and not lycaenid. A huge (relatively), sort of detached dark colored head with a smooth, bag-like body. At this point, we can say almost for certain that is a Common Checkered Skippers (Pyrgus communis). If it weren't for the fact that we had encountered several of the adults (which we only identified as this species only after catching one of them) we would have never seriously considered that there would be their eggs on the mallow, but certainly do now. No other skipper that we know of in our region feeds on and has a preference for Malvaceae.

And to spice things up a bit further, we found two skipper caterpillars on the same mallow that we found the Common Checkered Skippers and the eggs later today. One was perhaps a second instar and the other at least third. 

- Brian