Good news and bad news! Recently I was served a helping of humble pie. Noted expert and author of “The Butterflies of Colorado” series Mike fisher was browsing our website and found some skippers we had misidentified. So, we cleaned up our misidentifications and that was the extent of the bad news. The good news was that one of the skippers I had (mis)identified as Hesperia pahaska was actually Hesperia juba. There had only been one previous record of Hesperia juba from the state – that being nearly 40 years ago (Aug 1 1985) from the North Platte area. Back in 2023 (June 30) Jonathan Nikkila photographed a skipper at Gilbert-Baker Wildlife Management Area in Sioux County. Knowing Hesperia colorado did not fly that early I assumed the next likely species would be Hesperia pahaska. We all know what they say about assume.
Hesperia juba flies in multiple broods throughout the western United States. So, we have records of both early and late summer broods in Nebraska (albeit 40 years apart). If you have pictures of any of the branded skippers from western Nebraska check them out against the annotated pictures of Juba Skippers Mike was kind enough to send. Evidently this skipper has been flying around under our noses/radar for decades.
