Brown Elfin

Description:

Small, brown butterfly with a wingspan of about 20 mm. There is a dark blotch on the hindwing. This is the typical coloration of this species. You can compare it to the other one I spotted on the same day with a more pink coloration: http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/194...

Habitat:

Buckwheat in chaparral.

Notes:

"Named after a Canadian Inuit who was called Augustus by the members of the nineteenth-century John Franklin expedition. John Richardson, the naturalist on the Franklin Arctic Expedition. honoured Augustus for his devoted duty to the expedition members (The entomologist William Kirby wrote the actual description) The name chosen, Thecla augustus, had unfortunately already been used to describe another butterfly, so John Obadiah Westwood proposed a slightly modified version, Thecla augustinus, which became the official original name for the species."