The eastern comma may be spotted in woods near rivers, ponds, marshes, swamps, and other water sources.

This butterfly seldom visits flowers, but rather feeds on sap, rotting fruit, salts and minerals from puddling, and dung.

Caterpillars feed on paper birch (Betula papyrifera), false nettle (Boehmeria cylindrica), hackberry (Celtis occidentalis), hops (Humulus), wood nettle (Laportea canadensis), currants and gooseberries (Ribes spp.

The spiny larva varies in color from pale green to yellow to white and to even black.

They can be distinguished by the upperside color, which is orange brown in the comma and tawny yellowish brown in P. satyrus; by the underside pattern, which tends to be mottled in the comma but appears to be more longitudinally streaked in P. satyrus; and by the row of pale submarginal spots on the hindwing upperside, which tend to be separate and surrounded by dark shading in comma, but are larger and tend to run together into a pale band in P. satyrus.