The Hairstreak butterflies are pretty little jewels, but if you're not judicious, they can also be pretty confusing little jewels. Identifying them to species—there are several in our area—requires a close read of somewhat obscure field marks on the wings, but this year, rather than simply calling them Hairstreaks and being done with it, I've been zeroing in on the obscure and thoroughly enjoying the task. This one, which I spotted this morning nectaring on a newly opened Silverrod—a white-flowered variation on the Goldenrod genus of plants—has a large orange and black eyespot, which may be a predator-confusing decoy, that reaches what's called the PM line of dashes. According to Jeffrey Glassberg's wonderful new A Swift Guide to Butterflies of North America, "the inner side of the large orange spot is almost always flat." That's something of a judgement call here, but I'll go with more-or-less flat, and that, coupled with other marks that Glassberg offers, makes this, I'd say, a Gray Hairstreak: close reading rewarded.