Paraphrasing Miles Davis: Kind of blue! This butterfly with its intense blue color is very common throughout Italy and Europe, and the multiple "eyes" on the wings of some of its variants make it really a kind of omni-sighted hound: a semi-Argo, in fact, named after the mythological figure of Argo Panoptes: he who, with his hundred eyes, sees everything.
Cyaniris semiargus belongs to the family of Lycenidae and has a confused taxonomy, with no less than 66 synonymous names given over time by different scholars. There are 28 valid subspecies distributed from Spain and Morocco to Siberia, China and Korea. This species inhabits flowery fields, subalpine meadows, shrubby grasslands, riverbanks and wooded glades at elevations between sea level and about 2800 m depending on location. Males often congregate in large numbers at stains of urine or animal droppings from which they obtain minerals that are passed to females during mating. Both sexes feed avidly on a wide range of flowers but show a great preference for clovers. In the late afternoon, they seek sheltered areas of tall grass where they rest in company, adopting a head-down posture.