(Pallas, 1771)
Chequered Skipper
Description:
The Chequered Skipper usually occurs on damp grassland at woodland margins, or where there is woodland nearby, including road verges, also on the drier areas of raised bogs and at their edges. Breeding grounds are also known in somewhat drier locations at higher altitudinal levels.
Populations are usually small. The female lays her eggs one by one on the blades of coarse-leaved grasses. The caterpillars spin folded grass leaves together into a little tube, in which they spend most of their life, leaving it only to feed. Those who know what to look for, can find their traces, small half-moons nibbled away from the edge of the grass-blade. The caterpillars hibernate in a more substantial tube-like shelter. It pupates, its papery, pale-yellow chrysalis b suspended from withered grass by a silken girdle.
The Chequered Skipper is single-brooded.
Habitat:
Mixed woodland
Mesophile grasslands
Humid grasslands
Deciduous forests
Similar species:
Heteropterus morpheus
Carterocephalus silvicola