I photographed this little critter at Bannack State Park in SW Montana on 8-19-09. Bannack is very near the Pioneer Mountains, and its website gives its elevation as 5,780 feet, making this definitely an altitude-tolerant butterfly. Blues being the active, tiny, and wary insects they are, this was the best I could get--sadly, never could get the tops of the wings on this butterfly. The local environment at Bannack is mostly dry, hilly sagebrush and some spectacular bare stone outcrops. I know this little bug is in the family usually just called blues, but I don't have a bug guide yet and I'm really not good with butterfly ID yet. The fantastic MT state field guide page someone sent me to recently is light on photos of blues, and the few they have are all top-side.
