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Butterflies photographed in Costa Rica and nearby
If my ID is correct, this is another new species for me. It is hard to be sure when I cannot get both the top view and the side view like this. But the top view here matches best this new species for me, Mella Skipper – Anatrytone mella.
¡Pura Vida!
An old friend from seminary and Miami days, Carlos Cobos, was in Costa Rica this past week on a choir tour with his wife Linda from their church in Conway, Arkansas. They had a “free day” Friday while their group was in a hotel in La Fortuna. So I went with my driver and we showed Carlos & Linda a few things in that part of Costa Rica that they chose from my list of options. The last activity was to see the La Fortuna Waterfall, but since it was pouring down rain by then, we did not do that, considering the steep climb down and back up from the waterfall in rain. But we did a lot of other things like the Butterfly Conservatory and Sky Adventure for lunch with views of volcano and Lake Arenal! You can see the photos in my photo gallery titled: 2023 July 21 – Day Around Arenal Volcano.
There are too many photos to share in a blog post, so I hope you will check out the gallery! The feature photo of a sloth is repeated below after this shot of the three of us on the Bogarin Trail in La Fortuna. Interestingly, we paid to see a sloth (and other wildlife) on this trail and did not! But later saw a sloth alongside the highway! 🙂 Luck!? We did see birds and other wildlife on the Bogarin Trail though, so not a waste of time! 🙂
Now see more photos in the gallery: 2023 July 21 – Day Around Arenal Volcano which includes lots of nature of course! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
A nice little 24 page book of Haiku Poetry printed over my nature photos and available to the public at https://www.blurb.com/b/11644063-nature-descriptions-haiku
Or click this book cover image:
Free preview of every page at online bookstore!
¡Pura Vida!
I earlier promised a blog post on this unique place adjacent to Esquinas Rainforest Lodge and then I will lay off posts from that area for awhile. 🙂 And begin again tomorrow doing blog posts from my garden and the community of Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica! 🙂
The University of Vienna in Austria does an exceptional amount of tropical and rainforest research with not only their professors and students, but with many guest researchers from other parts of Europe and from the USA and Latin America. Read more about this important research station on their English-language website: https://www.lagamba.at/en/ while being aware that the primary language there is German. 🙂 Austrians speak an Austrian dialect of German.
Continue reading “La Gamba Field Station”
Check out the now finished gallery of photos from my latest Costa Rica Adventure and second visit to Esquinas Rainforest Lodge by clicking the first page image below or go to this link: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2023-July-1-6-Esquinas-Rainforest-Lodge
A few more butterflies I photographed that are not new for me, but still interesting . . . one for the emailed version, then a gallery of all . . .
This Renata Satyr, Yphthimoides renata, was spotted on the campus of the La Gamba Field Station down the road from Esquinas Rainforest Lodge. It is a rainforest research station for the University of Vienna, Austria and that is why German is spoken in that area as much or more than English along with the Spanish of course! And I refused to put it in the headline, but this is another “first time seen” butterfly for me! 🙂 And I will do a post on the research station later. And for the butterfly enthusiasts, yes, you need the side view of Satyrs for good ID and by blowing up my one angled side shot I was able to confirm the proper eye spots and lines to assure this identity. 🙂 Another Central American butterfly!
¡Pura Vida!
Though a lousy photo! It was my last photo made on the ground on this trip, just before getting on the airplane at the tiny Golfito Airport Terminal where I was waiting on the little plane to arrive inside the mostly glass building when a butterfly, Great Eurybia, flitted by and landed on the glass, inside the building, meaning terrible light for a photo, but here’s my cell phone camera effort, lightened up in Photoshop Elements 8 so that it is identifiable, just not a pretty photo! 🙂 It is my first sighting of this species, meaning I added three new butterflies on this trip! 🙂 This one found only in Costa Rica and Panama.
There is not a lot of information about this species online, but you can see the others posted on the website where these two photos will go at https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/eurybia-patrona or some better photos on another website. Though difficult to see in my photos, the eyes are black with a blue pupil and the orange eye-ring around it, the only Metalmark with this particular eye mark, thus a positive ID. 🙂 My collection is growing! See all my Costa Rica Butterflies Galleries – 245+ species!
¡Pura Vida!
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¡Pura Vida!
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.
Continue reading “Another New Butterfly!”
I was happy to find a new butterfly for my collection while at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge last week, the Spot-banded Daggerwing, Marpesia merops, found only in the tropics between Guatemala and Brazil. I will share the few other more common butterflies that I photographed on this trip in another blog post, segregating this very special one! 🙂 And for those in the Golfito area, I photographed him on the gravel road leading up to the lodge, between the lodge and La Gamba Research Station.
And as long as he was anywhere near me, he never fully closed his wings for me to get a side shot or picture of the bottom of his wings, but from my books it is the same pattern in a much lighter color, sort of a whitish tan or light grayish tan with none of the black seen on the top but the white spots remain.
¡Pura Vida!