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Giant Swallowtail

The Giant Swallowtail is a fairly common butterfly here and even in the states, but I haven’t shown one in a good while, especially the under-side like the photo above. The topside of this fellow (below) is the more familiar black and yellow shown here on the same butterfly photographed above! Yeah, I know, they look different as do the top & bottom of many butterflies. Read about Giant Swallowtails on Butterflies and Moths of North America.

 

A butterfly lights beside us like a sunbeam, and for a brief moment, its glory and beauty belong to our world… but then it flies again, and though we wish it could have stayed… we feel lucky to have seen it.       ~Unknown Author

 

A New Blog Feature in this New Website

You can hover over the top Menu Item “Blog” above for  Category Sub-menus that will drop down. Go down to “Nature” and its submenu “Butterflies” to see all the blog posts I have made about butterflies since 2014. In this case, 6 pages of butterfly posts! Some old posts are mixed subjects with too many photos. Now I am trying to stay focused on one “category” (WordPress term)  at a time with no more than 2 photos per post and a short, easy-to-read post like above. And you will see that there are many other “Categories” to follow if interested, with “Birds” being the largest and more are being added. And of course you can click on “Blog” Menu item and see all the posts in reverse chronological order or most recent on top.

All of the posts are also searchable in the right hand column or right sidebar by tags, categories, or by date. This makes my blog posts the main focus and main information found on my website now with multiple ways to find old posts. This is the strength of WordPress hosted websites, being blog-focused with many ways to utilize collections of posts.

You will also find a lot of “static” (WordPress term) or non-blog pages which I will tell about in another blog post.

Feel free to explore your interests now within the blogs through the pull-down menus or search boxes. I am having fun creating little articles about my interests, especially when I can share nature photography from my new home country of Costa Rica!  

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Desert Rose Pot Plant

The other day I only had a photo of one bloom. Here is what the whole plant in a pot looks like. It is a nice pot plant for the terrace and has been blooming almost constantly during the rainy season. I won’t expect that during the dry season. It likes the morning sun.

And here’s that single bloom again!

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Ruby-spotted Swallowtail

I know that this Ruby-spotted Swallowtail looks a lot like the Pink-spotted Cattleheart I posted a few days ago. But if you look close the spots are a little different in size, shape and colors and even the shape of the butterfly. Subtle differences is just one thing that makes labeling butterflies difficult! I did not get shots of both sides of this guy, partly because it started to rain.

Butterflies . . .  Flowers that fly and all but sing.

~Robert Frost

 

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Childhood Sweets

This trailer in front of the public primary school sells snacks to young children and it appears here to mothers too!     🙂

And I remember having sweets available for sale near my elementary school way back in the dark ages. A world-wide tradition?

All I really need is love, but a little candy now and then doesn’t hurt!

~Charles Schulz

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My One Fear – Terciopelo or Fer-de-lance

Its Terciopelo in Costa Rica or Fer-de-lance in the states, but with either name one of the most poisonous snakes in the world and we have them in my Roca Verde neighborhood unfortunately. The above photo is a dead one I just photographed while walking to town, on the sidewalk just outside our Roca Verde main gate. Since two people I know in Roca Verde have been bitten and I have found two dead ones myself, this one and another one earlier in the street in front of my house, I am more conscious of them being here and no longer leave my back door (garden door) open since there is no screen door on it.

All the clinics and hospitals have the anti-venom and if you get there quick enough, you live – but it is still scary and very painful I’ve been told.

For most this video will probably not appeal to you. It is a Terciopelo eating a frog. Snake lovers seem to love this kind of video!  🙂  At least it shows what they eat which is not people! Biting people is for their self-defense. Both persons biten here actually stepped on the snake while barefooted! And I never go out barefoot! Common sense caution is my defense.

 

Learn more about Terciopelo in the Wikipedia article in English.

This snake lives only in Central America, Mexico and northern South America.

Rain

As I type it is pouring down rain with the loudest thunder I’ve ever heard! Kind of like parts of the states, we are having above average rain this year and starting earlier in the day. So far the flowers seem to like it! And it is rainy season!    🙂

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Lunch with Mother

Around noon every day you see some of the elementary school children eating their lunch with their mothers in the park across the street from the school. Some grade levels only go a half day, morning or afternoon, meaning they eat lunch before or after school. But all ages of children are very close to their mothers making lunch with Mom very natural. Almuerzo con la madre.  

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Evening

All round my cottage it’s still,

Rain clouds gather over the hill.

Evening brings another eureka,

As I thank God for Costa Rica!

~Charlie

See my gallery of HAIKU Nature Poems 

(though the above is not a haiku!)

 

And for evening sunsets, see my Vistas gallery.

¡Pura Vida!

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A Simple Pleasure: Desert Rose Bloom

Just one bloom on a potted desert rose plant is a joy and mine has been loaded with blooms this year during rainy season and maybe because I moved it to the side of house for morning sun – my gardener’s suggestion! Later I will show a photo of the whole plant with multiple blooms, but somehow the only photo of the total plant is in my January 12, 2018 Post about this particular flower, though it was not as loaded in flowers as it has been recently.

“A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.” 
― Walt Whitman

For my gallery of Costa Rica Flowers+ see:   FLORA & FOREST 

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Pink-spotted Cattleheart Butterfly

Pink-spotted Cattleheart Butterfly

This is a rarer find today! This butterfly only exists from Mexico south as far as Costa Rica and is more common in Mexico and Guatemala. Read about the pink-spotted cattleheart, Parides photinus on Wikipedia or Google for other sites and articles.