This Skipper was on field bind weed before moving off to land on some grassy plant in the hayfield. I got only a glancing picture of its underside as it was sunning itself. The morning had been cool but now the sky was mostly sunny, there was a breeze in off the Bay but the temperature had risen to 18 C. INat lists the skipper as Carterocephalus-mandan, but my butterfly book calls it Carterocephalus palaemon. It is found, my book says, from Labrador to Alaska, and on the mountains of Idaho and Montana.

There are many of these spiders moving about in last years Spartina patens (cord grass); with practically every step a spider or two would come out from under the top-most blades of grass, run ahead, and disappear down into the deep layers of cord grass. Most were almost black, others a medium brown.