1 to 1 1/2 inch wingspread. This soft-colored little skipper can be told from others by the dark veins and peculiar mark on the fore-wings and the bright yellow-orange of the under-sides of the hind wings. The females are much larger than the males and have more dark markings.
The Delaware Skipper is found from Massachusetts to Florida and from Minnesota to central Texas, but it rarely very common anywhere. Perhaps this is because it likes to shyly hideaway when you approach it. However, once let it get a taste of some specially fine nectar among the flowers, and it becomes so interested in flitting from blossom to blossom that it may entirely forget you are near as long as you are quiet.
The little bluish-white caterpillar has a moon-shaped black mark near its tail end and is thickly speckled with black. The smooth white head has a black band and three black streaks on the face. It feeds mainly on grasses. When the cold days of fall come, the caterpillar crawls into some hiding place and turns into a brown chrysalid that stays in a long sleep until the warmth of spring causes it to wake and turn into a dainty butterfly that loves to flutter over the wide fields in search of flowers or linger along the edges of open woods in the sunlight.
