Butterflies can come in all shapes and sizes, and they all have their own types of beauty. The swallowtails are large and usually strikingly colorful, while most others are smaller and range from the all brown and black Horace’s duskywing to the brightly and multicolored red spotted purple. We also have a selection of much smaller butterflies like the hairstreaks. Not long ago, I featured a grey hairstreak, which is the one I see most often around here. Tonight’s little butterfly is the very closely related red banded hairstreak (Calycopis cecrops). It looks very similar to the grey hairstreak, but it has a wide orange wing stripe that the grey hairstreak lacks and a bit more color on the hind wings. Both live in the oak and pine woods of the sandhills and I have plenty of them in my yard. They tend to have a graceful, fluttering type of flight that adds to their attractiveness. I had been trying to get some photos of wasp that was definitely not being very cooperative when this little butterfly fluttered through the viewfinder and landed on a nearby leaf. Since I wasn’t having any luck with the wasp and was already focused for something small and close, I turned my attention to the butterfly. I managed to snap about three similar shots before it fluttered off again. The wasp was long gone by then, but I liked the way this shot of the little butterfly came out.