I’m slow getting all the photos processed and identifications made is why I keep coming up with new things! 🙂 This butterfly is not one I saw for the first time at Esquinas but have identified correctly for the first time, as I’m getting a little better at ID. It is a Hewitson’s Longwing, Heliconius hewitsoni that I saw in the understory deep in the forest on the Manakin Trail the other day at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge. I often compare my photos with not only my butterfly book photos, but online photos and even my own older photos which is when I discovered I had seen him before at Punta Leona but misidentified! And because the one at Esquinas was damaged and not in the best light, I am including the much better photo I made at Punta Leona for comparison and I will have to go back to all the places that photo appears and re-identify it! Whew! And because it is such a better photo, I will show it first and this is my first time to properly identify it.
Now see three weaker photos I made in the dark understory of the rainforest at Esquinas Lodge for comparison. I am now certain of this new identification and the website I volunteer for will have to add this new species because it is not now included, meaning that my photos will be the first ones on butterfliesandmoths.org. And this is not the first time I’ve introduced a new species there, thanks to the incredible variety of species in Costa Rica! Many are endemic to just Costa Rica or sometimes, like this one, endemic to Costa Rica & Panama’s Pacific Coast.
This particular butterfly was damaged and the light and other factors make the red markings (seen in better photo above) difficult to see, but at close examination, they are there and I am confident of this new identification! Thus for me, a new butterfly! 🙂
Therefore I now have a new gallery titled Hewitson’s Longwing with these photos. 🙂 and soon (I hope) butterflies and moths dot org will have a new species listed. 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
sO BEAUTIFUL!
🙂