Northern Sicklewing

About the Northern Sicklewing

The Northern Sicklewing is a large, dark, distinctive skipper of the South Texas brush - deep brown with a purplish sheen when fresh, and the sharply hooked, sickle-shaped forewing tips that name it. It perches with wings spread flat, often on the shady side of a leaf, and is one of the bigger and more noticeable skippers in the Valley.

Sicklewings fly with a fast, erratic dash along woodland edges and through gardens, visiting flowers and mud puddles, and the males patrol shaded trails. The caterpillars feed on prickly-ash and citrus, so the butterfly is never far from thorn forest or an old grove.

In Texas the Northern Sicklewing is a year-round resident of the Rio Grande Valley, common on the trails at Santa Ana and Bentsen and a regular in the butterfly gardens of Mission, reaching the United States only in South Texas.