Northern grizzled skipper

The northern grizzled skipper (Pyrgus centaureae) is a Holarctic skipper butterfly of the family Hesperiidae. In North America it ranges from the subarctic south to New Mexico and east to the Appalachian Mountains, and in the Palearctic, where it was first described from Norway, it spans Scandinavia and northern European Russia across the Urals and northern Asia to the Altai. Like most Pyrgus skippers it is brown, but it is greyer than its relatives, with bold white spots on both wings and veins that are clearly lined with white on the underside. The wingspan is 25 to 33 millimetres. It lives in northern taiga, forest-tundra and southern shrub tundra. In the south of its range it raises one generation a year, flying from March to May, while in the subarctic each brood takes two years. Caterpillars feed on plants of the rose family, including cloudberry, wild strawberry, dwarf cinquefoil and varileaf cinquefoil. Four subspecies are recognised, among them freija in Canada and wyandot, a form of the eastern shale barrens that conservation guidance says should be monitored.