The El Segundo Blue is a very rare butterfly. It only occurs on a tiny number of places on the coast near Los Angeles. The largest surviving colony is actually within the grounds of Los Angeles International Airport.

This is a picture of the El Segundo Blue. It is drinking nectar from the flowers of Coastal Buckwheat. This plant serves both as a source of food for the adults and for the caterpillars. The butterfly is closely associated with this plant and rarely occurs far away from it.

The El Segundo Blue has survived a number of threats a proposed Golf Course on the airport site would have severely damaged it. The development was amended and butterfly habitat has been included in the rough areas of the course. Also Common Buckwheat had been planted there . The El Segundo Blue cannot use this plant as it flowers too early in the season, but it attracted a series of other butterflies and moths which moved onto the Coastal Buckwheat when it came into flower. This caused problems for the rare butterfly. Not only was its only source of food being eaten by other creatures but its caterpillars suffered from the parasites they attracted.

The El Segundo Blue is protected under the US Endangered Species Act.