Straight Swift

Description:

Hesperiidae; Hesperiinae; Parnara kawazoei Chiba & Eliot 1991. This Straight Swift was giving me some concerns from the moment I spotted it, this morning. The photos I was able to get were all "closed wing" shots and I really felt that I needed a "half open wing" picture. What I saw when this butterfly briefly presented a half open wing position (not long enough for me to get a photo) was that the pattern, on the underside of the forewings, was the same as the pattern on the upper side. The reason that I could not get the picture I wanted was that Hesperiinae butterflies hold their wings in the "half open position" only when resting. When they deploy the proboscis to sip, they immediately adopt the "closed wing" position. This little guy was hungry and as soon as he landed, the proboscis shot out and the wings closed up, denying me any opportunity of an open wing picture. The reason I was eager to get a "half open" picture was that it would show the pattern of the underside of the forewing nearest to me and the top side of the forewing furthest from me. So, why was I so anxious to be able to present this in my spotting? Because I have never seen a skipper butterfly with the same dorsal and ventral markings on its wings and, as far as I knew, there was no such species. So, there I was, in the doldrums, wondering how to present what I saw, without photographic evidence. Without much enthusiasm, I set about preparing the usual references, Wikipedia, Philippine Lepidoptera, inaturalist etc. and I thought of EOL which I don't use as often as I should because I am not so comfortable with the layout of the site. But I was looking for anything which might breath a little life into a dead spotting. So I clicked on EOL and there it was! One simple sentence and everything fell into place, "These are small, brown skippers that have thin, translucent spots on their wings". I know of many butterflies and moths which have "windows" or completely transparent wings, but I had never heard of a Skipper having translucent spots. Of course the upper wing surface would match exactly the underwing. I was not looking at matching patterns; I was looking at the same pattern. Before posting this spotting, I did a little more research, to try and make sure that I didn't miss something else that everybody in the world (except me) knows. As far as I can tell, Parnara skippers, which are present in Africa, Asia and Australia are the only skippers with translucent spots on their wings. Maybe my ignorance of this interesting point can be forgiven. When all is said and done, we are all the same in this respect; we don't know what we don't know, until we know it :-)

Habitat:

Spotted visiting unidentified yellow flowers along the side of the road leading into the farm.

Notes:

Many good photos - https://inaturalist.ca/taxa/501102-Parna... Confirmation of presence in Luzon, Philippines - http://ftp.funet.fi/index/Tree_of_life/i...