Least skipper I started seeing these bright orange sprites flitting through the pickerel weeds and grasses at the marshy edges of the millpond in the last week of July, and since then, I've tried to urge them to sit still long enough so that I can zoom in for a picture. They haven't been listening to my pleading, but finally, I managed to "capture" one. It turns out to be an aptly-named Least Skipper (Ancyloxypha numitor), and, with a forewing length of a mere half-inch, it's our smallest butterfly. When it opens its wings, they're black edged with a dull orange center, and the skipper can then prove difficult to see if it's on a plant. The local dragonflies seem intrigued by the fingernail-sized creature, but its flight path, low and in the shadows of the vegetation, have kept the butterfly out of harm's way. Odonate harm, anyway.