Common Wood-Nymph Butterfly
I found this butterfly on the pavement down by the Houghton City Beach and Waterfront Park on July 22, 2024. This is a Common Wood-Nymph, Cercyonis pegala. These are one of the many types of “nymphalid” butterflies, and you may note that it only appears to have four legs, not six the way insects are supposed to. This is characteristic of the nymphalids, their two front legs have become reduced to the point where they are difficult to see.
I think this one was old and dying, because it didn’t try to fly away. Which meant that when I poked it, the wings opened up so I could actually get some pictures of the top side of the wings. This is a surpisingly hard shot to get with most butterflies, because they tend to rest with their wings closed, and only open them just before they take off and fly away.
With the wings open, we can see that there are actually two spots on the front wings. In the wings-closed shot, the second spot was covered by the hindwings and wasn’t visible. And looking at the pictures on bug-guide, very few people manage to get pictures with the wings open, so normally all you’re going to see is the one spot.
The caterpillars evidently eat grass, so they are pretty widespread butterflies. There are a lot of similar butterfly species that only differ from these in the number and exact color/shape of spots, including at least one widespread Eurasian species (Minois_dryas) that looks almost identical. To the point that, when I put the above picture into Google Lens, it gives me the European species instead of the North American species.