Check The Comma

Day 1: To open 365 Caws' ninth year of daily publication, I bring you Polygonia satyrus (Satyr Comma), a late-flying specimen encountered just a few days ago in Nisqually State Park. I'd gone out intending to explore the farthest reach of what I expected to be a dead-end trail (somewhere I had not gone previously in this relatively new park), but rather than terminating at a bluff above the river as anticipated, the disused path wrapped around and continued on, looping back to the main road some miles later. The highest point was a small, open grassland, and it was there that I found the Comma. I pursued it for a tenth of a mile or so, trying to get good photographs of both a dorsal and a ventral view. Every time my shadow fell across it, it would take wing and fly another ten feet before coming to rest. Individual Commas can be rather variable in colour, so the field characteristic which specifies "paler margin on hind wing" is not always 100% reliable. To tell them apart, you need to see the white marking on the underside of the wing which gives them their common name. Our two most common Commas in this area are Green and Satyr. The Green Comma's underwing is marked with a flattened semicircle; Satyr Comma's "comma" is pointed on both ends and resembles a check mark (see inset).