Long Tailed Skippers

The Long-Tailed Skipper (Urbanus proteus) is a fast flying little butterfly with white spotted wings and a furry blue-green colored body. The tails are part of their defense mechanisms; predators will often attack the tails looking for an easy meal, and instead find themselves with just a mouthful of scales. It's not uncommon to find a Long-Tailed Skipper with one or both tails missing.

Long-Tailed Skippers lay their eggs on plants in the legume family (Fabaceae). In Florida, they are often found on Desmodium incanum, a common yard weed. They use native legumes like Hairy Pod Cowpea (Vigna luteola) as well as garden beans (see more host plants here). These skippers sometimes lay their eggs in groups, stacking several on top of each other in little columns.

Their larva are green with orange hind-ends and tiny round heads. These little caterpillars, also known as "bean leaf rollers", will chew one the leaves of their host plants and leave a flap of leaf. Using silk from their spinnerets the caterpillars will fold the leaf flap over and secure it to the leaf. This creates tiny little pockets on the leaves in which the caterpillars can hide. As they get larger, leaf rolling caterpillars will roll whole leaves up into tubes or sometimes connect several leaves together to hide their larger bodies.

These larvae pupate inside of their leaf shelters, creating a small brown chrysalis covered in a powdery waxy substance. This most likely makes it distasteful to some predators.

Long-Tailed Skippers are found throughout the eastern half of the United States. They are occasionally considered to be pests of bean crops. You can attract them to your yard by growing green beans, snap peas, or other legumes.