Favoritos de lltimms

First one in the Meadows this year.
Kind of funny to see a Compton's and a Painted on the same day but have the Painted being the rarity!

The Painted was frantically nectaring, visiting dozens of flowers in a few minutes.

This one was very bright yellow compared to other skippers so it showed up from a distance: a very good thing as it did NOT stay in the area. Within a couple of minutes it had moved on and was not seen again despite standing still in that area for an hour watching the other butterflies coming and going, and checking again when I passed through the area a couple of hours later. Since the habitat is low quality, I think it continued on into the nearby yards where it would find lots of flowers etc. I would not recommend this as a spot to normally find Fierys only a few Wild Indigos and Peck's.

Note the fairly narrow subterminal yellow band on the underside of HW, about half as wide as Great-spangled Fritillary, red-brown colour on underside of HW, open orange margins of upperside, and diagnostic black mark at base of the upperside of FW. Eye colour is difficult to discern from photos

I am not at all confident in this ID. Good match based on photos from Wagner’s book and Layberry et al’s description but I am not familiar with the degree of variability in Eastern-tailed Blue. Feeding on Vicia cracca, more typical of ET Blue, but Fabaceae is in Eurosid II clade with Rosaceae, so leaf chemistry somewhat similar to Striped Hairstreak more typical Rosaceae diet. Note tending by ants; typical of Lycaenids.