I am thrilled with the number of small butterflies visiting our garden lately. Our newest visitor, leptotes cassius theonus, or otherwise known as the cassius blue butterfly, spent a lot of time drinking nectar from our scorpion tail.

The first thing that caught my eye, which is now trained to look for erratic flying insects, was the cassius blue’s two “eyespots” on its hindwing.

Their wingspan are small, only ranging from 1.4 to 2.5 centimeters. We do have one of its host plants in our garden, the plumbago, and tons of it.

I would imagine it would be next to impossible to spot an egg, although definitely interesting as they are bluish green in color.

The male has bright blue wings, while the female has paler blue with darker borders. Although I was not able to photograph the wings open, I definitely spotted the darker blue when flying. With his erratic style of flying, as well as it flying closer to the ground, from what I have read, is another indicator of it being a male.

The females slow down a little more while finding its host plant, or much higher near the tree tops.