Hoary Elfin

This weekend I traveled to northwestern Wisconsin to a workshop on photographing butterflies. I was hoping to get an opportunity to photograph some of the more unusual butterflies that are out in late spring and early summer. Unfortunately we found that there seemed to be a lot less butterflies then when we went to the same area last year in mid May. Who knows why? Maybe it had something to do with the long winter that we had this year or maybe it stems from the drought conditions that much of the central part of the country experienced last summer. I do consider the trip a success though because I was able to find several of the unique species that I was looking to photograph. One of those species is the hoary elfin. The hoary elfin is a northern butterfly that ranges in the northern United States, Canada and Alaska. Its larval host plant is bearberry so it is usually found in the vicinity of the plant. There is plenty of bearberry located in the sandy barrens of northwestern Wisconsin so we had many good looks of these tiny butterflies.