Bug Encyclopedia
Search and identify bugs & insects — beetles, butterflies, moths, ants, bees, spiders and more — with size, habitat, danger, behavior, and how to tell them apart.
Skipper Butterfly
A stocky, fast-darting butterfly with a large head, hooked antennae tips, and thick furry body, intermediate in appearance between butterflies and moths, named for its quick, skipping flight.
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Fiery Skipper
A small, fast, orange-and-black skipper often seen zipping low over lawns and gardens, with jagged black wing borders that resemble scorched edges.
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Peck's Skipper
A tiny, tawny-orange and brown skipper with a bold, irregular yellow patch on the underside of the hindwing that looks almost like a splash of paint.
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Silver-spotted Skipper
A large, chunky brown skipper instantly identified by the bold, translucent silvery-white patch splashed across the underside of each hindwing.
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Birdwing Butterfly
Among the largest butterflies on Earth, birdwings soar through rainforest canopies on angular, bird-like wings. Males dazzle with iridescent greens, golds, and blues, while the larger females wear more subdued browns.
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Malachite Butterfly
A large tropical butterfly named for the vivid green, mineral-like patches that break up its otherwise dark brown wings, giving it a translucent, stained-glass appearance in flight.
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Brimstone Butterfly
A sulphur-yellow, leaf-shaped butterfly whose folded wings mimic a fresh green leaf so convincingly it is often credited as the origin of the word 'butterfly'.
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Swallowtail Butterfly
A large, showy butterfly named for the elongated, tail-like extensions on its hindwings, often seen gliding gracefully around gardens and flowering meadows.
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Dogface Butterfly
A striking yellow sulphur butterfly whose forewing pattern forms the silhouette of a dog's or poodle's head complete with a dark 'eye' spot, visible in good light.
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Julia Butterfly
A brilliant, elongated-winged orange butterfly of tropical and subtropical habitats, with males glowing an intense unmarked orange and females showing subtler markings and a hint of black striping.
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Viceroy Butterfly
An orange-and-black butterfly closely resembling the monarch, distinguished by a smaller size and a distinctive black line crossing the veins of the hindwing, and long cited as a classic example of mimicry between two unrelated species.
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Monarch Butterfly
A large butterfly with bold orange wings crossed by black veins and a black, white-spotted border, famous for its multi-generational migration between North America and central Mexico.
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Comma Butterfly
An orange-brown butterfly with distinctively ragged, scalloped wing edges and a small white comma-shaped mark on the underside of the hindwing, resembling a dead leaf when at rest.
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Peacock Butterfly
A richly colored reddish-brown European butterfly named for the four large blue-black eyespots on its wings, which resemble the eye-like markings on a peacock's tail feathers.
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Blue Morpho Butterfly
A dazzling, hand-sized rainforest butterfly whose wings flash brilliant metallic blue in flight, an effect created not by pigment but by microscopic light-bending scales.
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Mourning Cloak Butterfly
A deep maroon-brown butterfly bordered with a cream-yellow band and a row of iridescent blue spots, unusual among butterflies for overwintering as an adult and being one of the first to appear in early spring.
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Cabbage White Butterfly
A small, plain white butterfly with one or two black spots on each forewing and dark wingtips, one of the most common and widespread garden butterflies in the world.
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Question Mark Butterfly
A ragged-edged anglewing butterfly named for the tiny silver question-mark squiggle on its mottled brown underside, with tawny-orange upperwings dotted in black.
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Painted Lady Butterfly
A medium-sized orange-and-black butterfly with a mosaic of white-spotted black wingtips, famous as the most widely distributed butterfly on Earth and a long-distance migrant.
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Four-spotted Skimmer
A brown, sturdily built dragonfly marked with a single dark spot on each wing, this holarctic species is famous for occasional mass emergences and long-distance swarming flights.
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Spangled Skimmer
Named for the bright white 'spangles' at the base of its wings, the Spangled Skimmer pairs a powder-blue male body with crisp black-and-white wing markings.
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Painted Skimmer
The Painted Skimmer's warm amber-and-brown mottled wings look like they were dabbed with a paintbrush, making this medium-sized skimmer one of the more artistically marked dragonflies in the East.
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Slaty Skimmer
A mature male Slaty Skimmer is powder-blue-gray from head to tail with jet-black wing tips, giving it a slate-colored, almost monochrome look as it patrols pond edges.
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Flame Skimmer
A blazing orange-red dragonfly of western waterways, the Flame Skimmer perches boldly on sunlit rocks and twigs, its amber-tinted wings glowing like embers in flight.
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