Yes – My first name was misspelled, but when done meticulously with flower petals, you won’t hear me complain! 🙂
And . . .
Continue reading “Happy Birthday Mr. Charleie”Happy Birthday Mr. Charleie
Fine-spotted Roadside Skipper
This Fine-spotted Roadside Skipper or Amblyscirtes folia is one of hundreds of “Skipper” butterflies. This one was photographed in my garden on June 20, 2022. I’ve been getting so many new butterflies this year that I’m having trouble keeping up with them all. There is very little about this species online in English with only a little in Spanish on Mexico and Ecuador sites that I won’t link here. I’m a new volunteer “coordinator” for Costa Rica on butterfliesandmoths.org and will soon get this fellow listed there, though I inherited a backlog of 450 submissions to go through and verify, so it may take a while! 🙂
See all my Costa Rica Butterflies Galleries for the amazing insect diversity here! At around 150 species, mine is the largest collection of just Costa Rica Butterflies & Moths I’ve found anywhere online. 🙂
And oh yes, this is the day I plan to be at Playa Cativo Lodge on the South Pacific coast of Costa Rica, so hopefully I make it and submit my first post from there tonight! 🙂 I just didn’t want to let this new butterfly discovery to wait around much longer! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Dusky-blue Groundstreak
Another “First Time Seen” butterfly for me, so I’m doing a second post today! 🙂 One of the “Hairstreak” butterflies, the Dusky-blue Groundstreak, Calycopis isobeon (link to butterflies & moths.org), is all over Costa Rica and another fingernail-sized butterfly! 🙂
I’m posting more butterflies than birds now partly because I haven’t had many birds in my garden and this is the time of year for more butterflies in Atenas is one reason. Another is that my interest in butterflies is going up and I have just become the “Costa Rica Coordinator” for the website butterfliesandmoths.org and since they haven’t had a CR Coordinator for 7 or more years here, I inherited a backlog of 450 submissions which will take months to go through, identify and approve while I’m anxious to submit my own 150 species photographed here. 🙂 I seem to always have plenty to keep me busy! 🙂 Enjoy this cool and different tiny butterfly and go outside and look for some where you live!
Whirlabout – A New Butterfly!
Whirlabout, Polites vibex (link to butterfliesandmoths.org) is one of the many Skippers that is found from the SE United States south to Argentina including Mexico and all of Central America. But it is the first time I have photographed it. Here’s 4 shots and then you can see more in my new Whirlabout Gallery! 🙂
Salome Yellow, Eurema salome
A couple more shots of the Salome Yellow Butterfly I introduced June 13. It seems that June is the time when I see more butterflies than birds in my gardens 🙂 , so until my trip (July 1), that’s what I’m posting about mostly! 🙂
Cloudless Sulphur & Why Costa Rica?
Though this is a repeat butterfly for the blog, these are maybe better photos than I posted back in 2020 and again on June 15 this year with some doubt then of the ID, but I’m relatively certain now that these are Cloudless Sulphur Butterflies, Phoebis sennae, butterfliesandmoths.org link. They seem to be fairly common all over North America and that website will soon start showing them in Costa Rica! 🙂
Two Different Swallowtails Sharing Flowers
Mid-morning as I walked through the garden, June 15, these two different species of Swallowtails were the only ones flitting around the flowers or mainly just the Porter Weeds. Neither are new to me and in fact you can see that I have better photos in their respective Photo Galleries:
And their top views . . .
Continue reading “Two Different Swallowtails Sharing Flowers”Esmeralda Longtail
This is my second year and third sighting of this butterfly in my garden over 7+ years which means he is not especially common also shown by the lack of reports online on the butterfly site. Many of the Longtail Skippers are very similar and have this bluish coloring on the body with the main difference being in the spots arrangement and the white fringe.
Guava Skipper
My second time to see this colorful butterfly was almost two weeks ago (yeah, I’m writing posts way ahead again, but will do it live daily on my trip in July). It was after breakfast, walking in my garden, when I found him. The Guava Skipper, Phocides polybius (Wikipedia link) is found from South Texas through Mexico and all of Central America down to Argentina. My only other time to see one was at Xandari Resort Alajuela for my birthday in 2019. Those photos plus these here can be seen in my Guava Skipper Gallery.
The one at Xandari was bluer than this one which is darker or close to black. And it is interesting that most of my butterfly photos at home show them on a Porterweed flower even though I have many other flowers. An obvious preference for butterflies and hummingbirds! 🙂 And by the way, they are called “Guava” because they lay their eggs on a Guava Plant, which is somewhere between a shrub and a small tropical tree. 🙂
Now here’s six shots in a slideshow for a change . . .
Continue reading “Guava Skipper”Blue-winged Sheenmark
This is my fourth time to see one of these colorful butterflies and all but one was in my garden, with the other one at Xandari Nature Resort in Alajuela. See my Blue-winged Sheenmark Gallery or see other people’s photos at this Butterflies of America site. I found no thorough articles online except to note that they’ve been reported from SE Mexico south through all of Central America to Ecuador. In other words another of those mainly in Central America butterflies! 🙂