Honey Bee and California Hairstreak feasting on blackberry nectar

Stand or sit still for a while outdoors and you will see so much in nature that you never expected.

I was standing on our patio in the late afternoon, camera at my side, and noticed a different kind of shape and movement, high in the blackberry hedge. And there it was, a California hairstreak butterfly Satyrium californica , sipping nectar and moving ever so slowly on a blackberry blossom.

In this image, the hairstreak is a dark, flat triangular shape to the lower right.

This alone was a first for me, to see one of these butterflies on a blackberry blossom.

And then a honey bee arrived to share nectar from the same group of blossoms.

The honey bee is to the left, and the hairstreak to the right, off center, facing downward.

You can see its distinctive two-tailed hindwings pointing straight up.

Each hindwing has a short and a long tail.

The two pollinators peacefully shared the same space as they fed on nectar.

That is, until the honey bee decided to land on the same blossom.

At that point the hairstreak flew away.