The Essex Skipper (Adopæa Lineola)
This butterfly is very like the Small Skipper, but may be separated from it, in both sexes, by the black under sides of the knobs of the antennæ. The black sexual mark in the male is finer, shorter, and much less oblique (Plate 125).
The egg (Plate 124) is pale greenish-yellow, oval in shape, flattened above and below; the top is slightly depressed. The eggs are deposited in July or August, in dried grass seed-heads and inside the sheath of a leaf, and the caterpillars, according to Hawes, do not hatch until April.
The caterpillar is green, with the incisions between the rings yellowish; there is a darker green stripe on the back, and the lines on the sides are yellow. The head is pale brown and striped with darker brown. It feeds from April to June on coarse grasses, such as Triticum repens. When full grown “it spins together the stems of the grass low down, with a network of white silk for pupation” (Hawes). The chrysalis is described as being long, yellowish-green in colour, and retaining the dark dorsal stripe seen in the caterpillar.
No doubt this butterfly has been with us all the time, but it appears to have escaped detection until the year 1888, when Mr. Hawes, in July of that year, met with it in Essex. He, however, did not then consider the three specimens that he had taken with A. thaumas anything more than queer varieties of that species, and it was not until January, 1890, that the fact of A. lineola being British was published. Since that time this Skipper has been found in a great many parts of Essex, but chiefly along the coast, and in such localities as Benfleet, Canvey, Dovercourt, Shoeburyness, Southend, etc. At Hadleigh it is often very abundant. Other localities are Sheerness, Cliffe, and Gravesend, in Kent. It has also been reported from near Sudbury, and from Harwich, and Chappel in Suffolk; from Ashton Wold in Northamptonshire. In 1898 five specimens, identified by the Rev. Gilbert Raynor, were taken near Bedford. Barrett, who mentions Wicken Fen and Burwell among other localities, says that it has a “partiality for the embankments which protect the cultivated land from the inroad of the high tides which flood the salt marshes. Here it flits about, or sits on the coarse seaside grasses or on blossoms of thistle, or Lotus corniculatus, indicating rather sluggish habits, yet flying swiftly when disturbed. Further inland it seems to frequent chalky hillsides and marshes.” It is on the wing in July and August.
The species is found in all parts of the Palæarctic Region except the most northern and the Canary Isles.