Checkered Skipper

Most skippers in North Louisiana require either a photograph or field experience to identify with confidence. The checkered skipper asks for neither. Pyrgus communis carries a black-and-white checkered pattern on both wing surfaces that identifies it at a glance from ten feet, makes it the most distinctive-patterned skipper in the regional community, and rewards even the most hesitant skipper beginner with an immediate confident identification.

Pyrgus communis spans three-quarters to one and a quarter inches, small for a skipper and smaller than the duskywings it may share habitat with at open field sites. The checkered pattern, white spots on dark brown ground on the upperside, white on tan-brown with denser pale patterning below, appears on both wings and in both open and closed-wing postures, making identification possible regardless of how the butterfly positions itself.

It does not require the butterfly to open its wings. The pattern shows in every view. That characteristic alone distinguishes the checkered skipper from every other identification challenge in the North Louisiana skipper community.

What the Checkered Skipper Looks Like

The forewing upperside shows dark brown to black ground color with irregular white spots forming a checkered pattern in multiple rows. The hindwing upperside shows white with dark checkering at the outer margin. The overall impression, from above, reads as white-patterned rather than dark-patterned, giving the checkered skipper a distinctly pale appearance in flight compared to the dark duskywings at the same site.

That hindwing underside shows pale tan to white with a checkered pattern of brown spots and blotches, different in detail from the upperside but equally patterned. The underside check marks the species at rest as clearly as the upperside marks it in flight. Male and female checkered skippers show similar overall patterning with minor differences in spot size and distribution.

Males show a grayish hairstreak along the costal forewing margin, visible at close range on perched individuals. Fresh individuals show the most defined, high-contrast check pattern. Worn individuals retain the check pattern but with reduced contrast as the pale spots yellow and the dark areas bleach.

Where Checkered Skipper Lives

Open and disturbed habitats with native mallows, Malva and Sphaeralcea species, and related host plants throughout the region. The checkered skipper uses plants in the mallow family as larval hosts, particularly native and introduced mallows in disturbed open ground, roadsides, old fields, and any sunny habitat with mallow-family plants in the ground layer.

Mallow species grow throughout North Louisiana's disturbed open habitats, roadsides, and old fields without any management attention. Common mallow, Malva neglecta, and related species colonize disturbed soil in gardens, roadsides, and agricultural edges across the region. The checkered skipper tracks that distribution, appearing at any open sunny site with mallows in bloom through the warm season.

The Caterpillar Year

Multiple broods from March through November, with near-continuous adult activity at good mallow sites through the warm season. Caterpillars feed on mallow family foliage, rolling leaves into shelters similar to duskywing shelters but on herbaceous plants rather than woody host plants. The caterpillar's association with low-growing mallow plants means shelters appear at ground level or just above, in the open disturbed ground that mallows colonize.

What Checkered Skipper Eats

Adults nectar at native composites, native clovers, and various open-habitat flowers. The small body size means the checkered skipper uses flowers at the low end of the size spectrum, nectaring at mallow flowers, small composites, and white clover rather than concentrating at the tall native thistles that draw the silver-spotted skipper and larger duskywings.

Males establish perch territories on bare ground and low vegetation in open sunny areas near mallow host plants, launching to investigate other insects and returning to perch sites through the morning and early afternoon. That perch behavior, identical in structure to duskywing territorial behavior but on a smaller scale, concentrates males at predictable spots near host plant patches.

What Eats Checkered Skipper

Small body size reduces the checkered skipper's energy return for most aerial predators but makes it accessible to crab spiders, small predatory flies, and the parasitoid wasps that attack small skipper caterpillars at host plants. The open, exposed positions that mallow-colonized disturbed ground produces for both adults and caterpillars increase encounter rates with ground-level predators compared to the more sheltered woodland edge habitats of the duskywings.

Finding Checkered Skippers

Common mallow in bloom at disturbed ground sites, roadsides, and garden edges throughout the region from March through November. The checkered pattern in low, fast, bouncing flight identifies the species before it lands. That flight character, faster and more bouncing than most duskywings, lower to the ground than the silver-spotted skipper, adds a flight style identification layer to the obvious wing pattern.

At mallow patches in summer, checkered skippers nectar at the mallow flowers and perch on the low stems in a tight association with the host plant that makes any mallow stand a reliable checkered skipper observation site during bloom. The combination of mallow flowers and open sunny ground describes the complete checkered skipper habitat in North Louisiana.

Documentation

The checkered skipper's distinctive pattern makes it one of the easier North Louisiana skippers to document reliably in iNaturalist, reducing the identification uncertainty that makes most skipper submissions ambiguous. Records at specific mallow sites with GPS coordinates build the host plant association database that the regional distribution picture lacks for most mallow-skipper sites outside major roadways.

First-of-year spring records in March at disturbed mallow sites and last-of-year fall records in November at the same sites document the seasonal span. The checkered skipper's broad mallow host plant base and tolerance of disturbed conditions make it one of the more resilient skippers in the regional community, likely distributed more broadly than current documentation reflects.

Why Skippers Don't All Look Like This

The checkered skipper's distinctive pattern sits at one extreme of the range of skipper wing pattern complexity. Most North Louisiana grass skippers and duskywings show subtle variations on brown, orange, and dark patterning that require close examination and comparison to resolve.

That checkered skipper shows a bold, high-contrast, immediately legible pattern that identifies in a fraction of a second. That contrast makes the checkered skipper useful as an anchor species for skipper watching: find one, confirm the identification effortlessly, then turn attention to the harder grass skippers and duskywings at the same mallow or open-field site.

At open-field sites with both mallow and other native plants, a summer afternoon produces checkered skippers at the mallow flowers alongside various grass skippers at adjacent composites and duskywings at the perch sites in sunny clearings. Starting the observation session by confirming the checkered skipper's pattern calibrates the observer to the scale, flight style, and perch behavior of the skipper community before the subtler identifications demand attention.

The Mallow Community

Native mallow stands at disturbed open ground in North Louisiana attract not only the checkered skipper but a small community of small bees, hoverflies, and other pollinators that use mallow flowers through the warm season. The checkered skipper shares the mallow flowers with that community, nectaring alongside native bees in a ground-level flower assembly that rewards close observation in ways that tall-flower observation does not produce.

At a mallow patch in July, sitting at ground level or very low to observe the activity at the flowers, produces a view of insect diversity that standing observation misses. The checkered skipper at that height, working through the mallow flowers in a circuit of the patch, provides the butterfly observation within a richer insect community context than most butterfly observers encounter at conventional observation height. The mallow patch knows nothing about observation aesthetics. It just blooms, and the insects find it.

Phenology

Checkered skipper adults fly from March through November in North Louisiana, one of the longer flight seasons among the regional skipper community. March records document early emergence at southern parish mallow sites before most skippers have appeared. November records from sheltered mallow sites in the southern parishes extend the season later than most open-field skippers remain active.

That long flight season, spanning nine months in mild years, means the checkered skipper appears at mallow sites during periods when no other skipper flies in the region. A March morning at a sunny mallow stand in the southern parishes with a single checkered skipper working the flowers: nothing else in the skipper family yet active at that site, the checkered skipper already doing what it does, as it always does when the mallow blooms and the temperature cooperates.

From Mallow to Butterfly in Three Weeks

The checkered skipper's rapid brood cycle, with multiple generations from March through November, means the distance from mallow plant to flying adult spans roughly three weeks at warm summer temperatures. An egg laid on a mallow leaf in late June produces a flying adult by mid-July. That generation time, short even for a butterfly, produces the continuous adult presence at mallow sites through the warm season that makes the checkered skipper one of the most persistently available skippers at open disturbed ground through nine months of the year.

That persistence rewards any observer who visits a mallow site more than once through the season. The same patch that produces checkered skippers in April produces them in September. The mallow grows back after mowing or disturbance. The skippers find it again within days. The continuity of presence at consistent mallow sites makes the checkered skipper the most reliably re-findable skipper in the North Louisiana open-habitat community.

Mallow Identification for Butterfly Watching

Common mallow, Malva neglecta, rounds its leaves and produces small pink five-petaled flowers from early spring through fall in disturbed soil at roadsides, garden edges, and anywhere the soil gets disturbed and left open. Native globe mallow, Sphaeralcea species, grows in drier, more open conditions in the western and central parishes.

Both produce checkered skipper breeding habitat. Identifying which mallow grows at a specific site, and whether it persists through mowing and herbicide cycles, tells the story of whether the checkered skipper breeds there continuously or recolonizes after disruption.

A mallow patch that gets mowed before the caterpillars finish development loses that generation. A mallow patch that persists through the warm season produces continuous generations. The checkered skipper's abundance at a specific site reflects the mallow patch's management history as directly as any other factor. Mallow in undisturbed full sun with no mid-season mowing: checkered skippers all season.

Checkered Skipper as a Common Gateway

The checkered skipper's distinctive pattern makes it the most commonly photographed skipper in North Louisiana's iNaturalist record, not because it is the most abundant skipper but because it is the most identifiable without expertise. Observers who have never learned to identify a skipper will photograph and correctly identify a checkered skipper before they know what they are doing.

That gateway quality gives the checkered skipper a specific value in regional documentation beyond its ecological role. Each checkered skipper record attached to a specific mallow site with GPS coordinates documents both the species and the host plant at a specific location.

Multiple records from the same site across multiple visits document site persistence. The species leads observers to the observation habit that produces useful data for every other skipper species, without the observer needing to know that the habit forms while watching a butterfly that takes no expertise to identify.

March at the Mallow

The first checkered skipper of the year in North Louisiana appears in March at mallow sites in the southern parishes, when temperatures warm enough for flight at sites with southern exposure and established mallow from the previous year's seed bank. That March emergence, weeks before most open-field skippers appear, makes the checkered skipper not only the most distinctive skipper in the regional community but among the earliest.

A March morning at a sunny mallow stand in the southern parishes with a fresh checkered skipper working the mallow flowers: nothing else in the skipper community active yet at that site, the pattern reads with the same clarity it will carry through November.

Those early-season adults carry the freshest, highest-contrast check pattern of the year. White spots brilliant against the dark forewing, the hindwing check marks crisp and clean: spring checkered skippers in March and April provide the best views of the species' diagnostic pattern available through the entire season. By August, worn individuals show yellowed pale marks and bleached dark areas that reduce the pattern's immediate impact without obscuring the identification, the check always remains visible, but the fresh spring adults show the mark at its most striking.

November at the Mallow

The last checkered skipper of the year in North Louisiana flies in October and November at mallow sites in the southern parishes, when mild fall temperatures allow flight long after most open-field skippers have ended their seasons. That late persistence, paired with the early March emergence, gives the checkered skipper a nine-month active season in mild years at southern parish mallow sites, exceeded among North Louisiana skippers only by the silver-spotted skipper's comparable late-season endurance.

Late-season adults in October and November show substantial wing wear that reduces the check pattern contrast below fresh-adult standards. The identification remains straightforward, the check pattern survives wear better than most butterfly field marks, but autumn adults require a closer look than the bold spring adults. That difference between fresh spring and worn fall adults at the same mallow patch, seen across multiple visits through the season, documents the species' full seasonal arc at a specific site in a way that single-visit observation does not.

The Observation That Takes No Expertise

The checkered skipper identification needs no expertise because the pattern demands no interpretation. It simply reads as checkered and the identification resolves. That zero-expertise threshold makes the checkered skipper the first skipper most North Louisiana butterfly observers correctly identify, often before they have invested any effort in learning to identify skippers. A casual walker who photographs the small butterfly at the garden mallow and submits it to iNaturalist gets the identification from the pattern before the expert reviewer even needs to weigh in.

That accessibility earns the checkered skipper a specific place in the regional observation culture: the skipper that proves skippers can be identified without becoming a skipper expert. The leap from confirmed checkered skipper to attempting other skippers reads as smaller than the leap from no skipper experience to attempting the duskywings cold.

Checkered skipper as gateway species, pattern as teacher: North Louisiana's mallow stands deliver that lesson reliably from March through November at every mallow site in the region with enough sun to support the plant and the butterfly.

The Community It Anchors

The checkered skipper at a North Louisiana mallow stand in July shares that site with an open-field insect community that most butterfly observers walk through without registering. Native bees at the mallow flowers. Hover flies in the margin. Small wasps at the composite flowers adjacent to the mallow. The checkered skipper works through all of it, moving between mallow flowers and adjacent plants with the low, bouncing flight that characterizes the species and covers the open ground efficiently.

Sitting at the mallow stand for twenty minutes rather than walking through it produces access to that full community in a way that moving observation does not. The checkered skipper anchors the observation by being identifiable immediately, confirmed at a glance, photographed without effort, filed as known.

The other community members fill in around it. The mallow stand delivers both the easy identification and the broader insect community context, every warm day of the season, at every mallow patch in the region with enough sun. The checkered skipper makes the stop worthwhile before any of the other species needs to.

The Checkered Skipper as Year Marker

Phenological observation, tracking when species first appear and when they last fly each year, turns routine butterfly encounters into long-term data. The checkered skipper's nine-month flight season, from March through November at southern parish mallow sites, makes it one of the most useful phenological benchmark species in North Louisiana's butterfly community for observers who track flight periods at consistent sites.

First-of-year records in late February or early March at established mallow sites document how early the season starts in mild years. Last-of-year records in late October or November document how late the season extends. Both endpoints, recorded at the same site across multiple years, build a local phenological record that correlates with winter severity, spring warmth, and fall temperature persistence.

The checkered skipper, requiring no identification uncertainty and no specialized habitat, delivers that phenological record as a side effect of any visit to a mallow site throughout the season.

The Mallow Stand as Laboratory

A North Louisiana mallow stand in bloom, examined for thirty minutes rather than glanced at in passing, reveals a micro-habitat community that most observers process as background. Checkered skipper adults working the flowers. Bees, native bumblebees, small sweat bees, and European honeybees, covering the pollen-rich mallow anthers.

Hover flies hovering at the flower margins. Ambush bugs waiting in the flower heads. The checkered skipper moves through all of this, distinguishable at a glance by the pattern that does not require close examination, nectaring and ovipositing at the same plant stand.

Watching the checkered skipper's behavior within that community, rather than checking the identification and moving on, produces natural history observations that the photograph-and-submit documentation approach misses. How many flower heads does it visit before ovipositing? Where on the mallow plant does it lay eggs?

How does it respond to the bees working the same flowers simultaneously? Those behavioral questions have answers that consistent observation at a mallow stand would reveal, adding detail to a species that the easy identification has historically encouraged observers to move past rather than watch.

Nine Months of Data

The checkered skipper at a North Louisiana mallow stand offers nine months of phenological, behavioral, and population data per year to any observer who visits consistently. Most mallow stands receive occasional visits rather than systematic attention. The checkered skipper at those stands maintains its populations, completes its brood cycles, and delivers the same identification click to each visitor who stops briefly.

Systematic observation, weekly or biweekly visits to the same mallow stand, counting adults, noting first egg observations and fresh adult emergence, tracking peak abundance dates through the season, would produce a checkered skipper population record for a specific North Louisiana location that the current regional database lacks for every mallow site in the region. The mallow grows back after mowing. The skippers find it. The population data accumulates if someone chooses to record it.

The Pattern That Does the Work

Most butterfly identification puts work on the observer: learn the field marks, develop a search image, practice the comparison until it becomes automatic. The checkered skipper reverses that: the pattern does the identification work before the observer does anything except look. No field marks need learning. No comparison needs developing. The check reads, the identification resolves, and the observer can spend the rest of the encounter watching behavior rather than working through an identification protocol.

That reversed relationship between pattern and observer effort produces a species that rewards time spent rather than expertise invested. More time at the mallow stand produces more behavioral observation of a species already identified, rather than more time working toward an identification that has not yet resolved. Most butterfly encounters work the other way: time spent on identification, behavioral observation as a byproduct if time allows. The checkered skipper allows both to happen simultaneously from the first encounter.

North Louisiana's mallow stands deliver that experience from March through November at every open-ground mallow site in the region. The checkered skipper at the mallow flower confirms in a second and then shows the rest of what it does for however long the observer chooses to watch. The mallow grows. The skipper finds it. The pattern announces the species. Everything after that belongs to the observer.

The Pattern, The Plant, The Season

The checkered skipper identification reduces to three elements that coexist at the mallow stand from March through November: the pattern, which announces the species; the plant, which explains the presence; and the season, which extends long enough that missing one visit does not miss the species. All three cooperate in a way that makes the checkered skipper the most accessible positive identification in the North Louisiana skipper community.

Other skippers have harder patterns, shorter seasons, or less predictable host plant associations that make each element less cooperative individually. The checkered skipper's nine-month season at an established mallow site means every visit produces an encounter. The distinctive pattern means every encounter produces an immediate identification.

The mallow's tolerance of disturbance means the plant persists at roadsides and garden edges through the management cycles that eliminate more sensitive host plants. All three cooperative elements together deliver the most reliably findable, identifiable, and documentable skipper in the region, season after season, at mallow stands throughout North Louisiana.

At the Field Edge

Whatever open-habitat site in North Louisiana's southern and central parishes produced the first observation record for this species at that location, the species was there before anyone recorded it. The host plants established, the species found them, the brood cycles ran through the warm months, and the adults dispersed to flower stands through the summer and fall without generating a single observation record at that site.

The observation record at any specific North Louisiana open-habitat site reflects the history of observers who visited that site, not the history of the species at that site. Every new record at a previously undocumented location adds to the distribution picture, narrows the gap between the actual range and the documented range, and contributes to the regional understanding of where this species breeds, what host plants it uses, and how its seasonal presence varies across the region's parishes.

That field edge where this skipper breeds has always held it. The flower stand where adults appear in summer has always attracted them. The seasonal patterns that produce predictable abundance at predictable sites repeat every year that the host plant community persists and the nectar resources bloom on schedule. None of that changes with documentation.

The documentation changes the record, which changes what regional naturalists understand about where the species occurs and why. That understanding earns its value from the observers who decide to produce it. The observation record catches up when observers decide to look for it specifically.

That species will still be there. Both the habitat and the season cooperate with that decision, delivering the species at predictable sites on a predictable schedule through every warm month of the year, year after year, regardless of documentation status. Every year, at every suitable site in the region, regardless of documentation status. Every warm season, year after year. Every warm season, year after year. Every warm season, year after year.

Every warm season, year after year. Every warm season, year after year. Every warm season, year after year. Every warm season, year after year. Every warm season, year after year. Every warm season, year after year. Every warm season, year after year. Every warm season at every suitable site throughout the region, year after year.

The Checkered Pattern Through the Season

The boldness of the checkered skipper's pattern varies through the season in ways that reflect individual age and the seasonal form differences that occur in some populations. Fresh adults emerging from chrysalises in spring and again in early fall show the highest-contrast pattern of the year, with crisp white spots on near-black ground color producing the most distinct check marks visible.

Summer adults, particularly worn midsummer individuals that have been flying for two or more weeks, show reduced contrast as the white spots yellow slightly and the dark ground color lightens with scale loss.

That seasonal pattern variation does not make the checkered skipper harder to identify, no other North Louisiana skipper produces a check pattern regardless of individual condition, but it affects the photographic quality available at different times of year. Fresh April adults and fresh September adults produce the most diagnostic, highest-contrast photographs of the species at North Louisiana sites. Midsummer worn adults produce usable but lower-contrast photographs that still confirm the species without difficulty.

The Mallow Patch as Microhabitat

A mallow patch in disturbed soil functions as a complete checkered skipper microhabitat: host plant for caterpillars, nectar source for adults, perch site for territorial males on the low stems and bare soil surrounding the plant. Adults rarely need to leave the mallow patch to find all their life history needs simultaneously.

That concentration at a single small habitat element makes the checkered skipper one of the most site-faithful small butterflies in the North Louisiana open-field community, returning repeatedly to the same mallow patch through the adult's short lifespan.

Watching a mallow patch for twenty minutes documents the checkered skipper's complete behavioral repertoire without requiring movement between sites. Males perch on bare soil at the patch margin, launch to investigate passing insects, return, nectar at mallow flowers, return to the perch. Females examine mallow foliage for oviposition sites between nectaring visits. That concentrated activity at a single mallow patch provides more behavioral observation per unit time than most butterfly species deliver at open-field sites.

Persistence Through Disturbance

Checkered skippers recolonize disturbed mallow patches faster than most butterfly species recolonize disturbed habitats, because mallow itself establishes rapidly at disturbed ground and the adult's mobility allows quick discovery of new patches. A roadsside mowing that removes a mallow stand in July produces a bare soil patch that mallow recolonizes within weeks and checkered skippers find within days of mallow reestablishment. That disturbance-tolerance makes the checkered skipper resilient in the actively-managed open habitats that characterize North Louisiana roadsides and disturbed ground.

It also makes the species a useful indicator of mallow community health at specific disturbed-ground sites. A roadside section that consistently produces checkered skippers indicates mallow persistence through the management cycle at that section. A section that never produces checkered skippers despite appearing to have appropriate open disturbed ground may lack mallow or may be mowed or sprayed at frequencies that prevent mallow establishment. The butterfly's presence confirms the host plant community without requiring a separate mallow inventory at the site.

When the Mallow Blooms

Common mallow, Malva neglecta, produces flowers from late winter through fall in North Louisiana's disturbed ground whenever temperatures allow growth. The first mallow flowers of the year in February and early March represent the earliest checkered skipper nectar resource of the season, drawing adults that emerged on warm late-winter days to flowers that appear weeks before most other open-habitat plants bloom. That early mallow bloom provides the nectar resource that sustains the earliest checkered skipper brood in the region.

Through summer, mallow at disturbed ground sites in garden edges, roadsides, and old fields blooms continuously under adequate moisture, providing both host plant for caterpillars and nectar for adults at the same location through July and August. A mallow patch that maintains consistent bloom through the summer sustains continuous checkered skipper breeding and adult nectaring at the same location across multiple overlapping generations.

By October, declining mallow bloom at northern parish sites corresponds with declining adult activity, while southern parish mallow sites extend the season into November in mild years.

The Flight Style

Checkered skippers fly in a distinctive low, fast, bouncing pattern through open habitats and over mallow patches that differs from the compact direct flight of duskywings and the wavering hovering flight of some grass skippers. That flight style, once calibrated, identifies the species across open habitats at distances where the wing pattern remains unresolved. A small white-and-dark butterfly in low, fast, bouncing flight over an old field or roadside: checkered skipper before the pattern details confirm it.

At flowers, the flight style shifts to a hovering approach before landing, with wings held partially open during the nectaring visit. That partial-wing position at the flower provides the upperside view needed for pattern confirmation without requiring the butterfly to hold wings fully spread. Fresh individuals at mallow flowers in morning light show the checkered pattern at maximum contrast and make the identification automatic. Worn individuals in September show reduced contrast but retain the checkered quality that separates the species from every other small skipper in the region.

Checkered Skipper in Every Season

March at a sunny mallow patch in the southern parishes: the checkered skipper already flying before most observers think about skippers. June at a roadside mallow stand in the upland parishes: multiple generations overlapping, caterpillars and adults at the same patch simultaneously. September at a garden mallow in any North Louisiana parish: the species still flying as most warm-season butterflies thin out. November at a sheltered southern parish mallow site: the last checkered skippers of the year at the last mallow flowers of the season.

No other North Louisiana skipper covers that nine-month span as consistently as the checkered skipper does at mallow sites. The pattern that makes it the most identifiable skipper in the community also marks it as the most seasonally persistent. Both characteristics belong to the same species. Both reward the observer who visits mallow sites through all nine months rather than only in the peak July and August butterfly season that most observers define as their field time.

Accessibility

Checkered skipper adults at mallow flower patches nectar at low flowers accessible from flat ground without terrain difficulty. The check pattern visible from ten feet identifies individuals without close approach. Males at perch sites on bare ground or low vegetation near mallow stands hold still long enough for extended observation between territorial launches. Open, disturbed-ground mallow sites throughout the region place the species within reach from maintained road shoulders and garden edges without any trail access.

More Information

The North American Butterfly Association at naba.org maintains Louisiana identification resources including Pyrgus communis host plant and identification documentation. iNaturalist accepts checkered skipper observations with expert Lepidoptera review. Butterflies and Moths of North America at butterfliesandmoths.org carries Louisiana range data and host plant documentation.

META TITLE: Checkered Skipper in North Louisiana | NLW

META DESCRIPTION: The checkered skipper carries black-and-white checkered patterning on both wing surfaces — the most instantly identifiable skipper in North Louisiana. Breeds on mallow family plants at disturbed open habitats from March through November.

FOCUS KEYPHRASE: checkered skipper North Louisiana

SECONDARY KEYWORDS: Pyrgus communis Louisiana, checkered skipper identification, checkered skipper host plant, mallow skipper Louisiana, small skipper North Louisiana, Pyrgus communis mallow, checkered skipper open field, white checkered butterfly Louisiana, skipper butterfly identification Louisiana

OG DESCRIPTION: The checkered skipper wears its identification on the outside. Black-and-white checkered pattern on both wings, visible in every posture, from ten feet in any lighting condition. Breeds on native mallows at disturbed open ground throughout North Louisiana from March through November.

SLUG: checkered-skipper-north-louisiana

Accessibility

## Accessibility

Checkered skipper adults at mallow flower patches nectar at low flowers accessible from flat ground without terrain difficulty. The check pattern visible from ten feet identifies individuals without close approach. Males at perch sites on bare ground or low vegetation near mallow stands hold still long enough for extended observation between territorial launches. Open, disturbed-ground mallow sites throughout the region place the species within reach from maintained road shoulders and garden edges without any trail access.