At the sign of the "M"
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White M Hairstreak
It's been a fine year for Hairstreak butterflies, so I've had plenty of them to work with to improve my identification skills. This one, of course, is easy—a White M Hairstreak. Parrhasius m-album—you can guess what the Latin species name means—is now a commoner, but it turns out that it only started colonizing our area in the last 40 or so years. Before that, it was a more southern species. rarely venturing north of New Jersey. Probably because of climate change, the White M has been able to expand its range, so now, on many of my forays, I'm able to spot this pretty southerner, with its White M wing mark and, when its wings are still new, long, thin wing tails. This butterfly kept insisting that the world was best viewed upside down. I don't know why it was so inclined, but at least it remained in one place.