Category: Butterflies

Butterflies photographed in Costa Rica and nearby

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Banded Peacock Butterfly

At first I thought this was something else, a Red-spotted Patch (found only in Mexico) and also of one I photographed in July at Xandari, called the Crimson or Bordered Patch. There are several kinds of Patches, all colorful and interesting, but the more I looked I decided this is the common Banded Peacock. Here he is with wings folded, same butterfly!

Article about this particular Banded Peacock Butterflies  on Wikipedia and another article on Butterflies & Moths of North America.. Note that there is another variety in India with the same English name but looks different.

My Photo Gallery of Butterflies & Moths has over 80 species I have photographed here in Costa Rica. I love living in a colorful place!  🙂

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Panama vs Costa Rica for Retirees – Another article by Christopher Howard on his blog Living in Costa Rica, and of course slanted toward Costa Rica – but still an interesting comparison of the two countries for American retirees and interesting to me because he briefly compared Atenas, Costa Rica (where I live) with Santa Fe, Panama, both popular for retirees and about the same size. He does say that cost of living is higher in Costa Rica but does not say that I have observed Panama as “more Americanized,” if that is a correct term, with more communities full of almost all Americans, speaking only English and store stocking more American products. Retirees are more spread out across Costa Rica with Spanish the needed language everywhere and the few American products here are very expensive! If you want to retire in an English-speaking community of mostly Americans with American products and luxuries, Panama might be better for you.

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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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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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Giant White Butterfly

Another Giant White Butterfly – the only species slowing down enough to photograph in my garden right now and I’m not going beyond my garden these days with a sore shoulder. This is a repeat butterfly within a week, but a different view.  🙂  The chachalacas and rufous-naped wrens are active but I’m tired of photographing them. So a repeat butterfly today!

My shoulder is doing fine, the incision healing well and I start with a physical therapist Saturday. Pain only bothers me at night and the pills help with that.

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Plain Longtail Buttefly

The Plain Longtail Butterfly or Urbanus simplicius proves that all butterflies are not colorful. In fact, I had one of the many different longtails in my bathroom one night and thought at first that it was a bat! Yes, he is fury!  But you have to admit that he is very interesting and beautiful in his own simple way, photographed here in my garden. I have a photo of a White-striped Longtail in my butterfly gallery and there are other varieties.

See also my Photo Gallery Butterflies and Moths with more than 80 species photographed here in Costa Rica.

I also have a little 7X7 inch photo book titled My First 50 Butterflies in Costa Rica.  You can preview all pages electronically for free at this link. Best viewed full screen for bigger photos.

¡Pura Vida!

Report on My Surgery Last Night

My right arm is still numb, so limited left-hand typing. Hospital and docs/staff were super! I see doc tomorrow and schedule physical therapy. No problems, still numb. No pain.

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Gulf fritillary or passion butterfly

The Gulf Fritillary Butterfly is found in the states touching the Gulf of Mexico, especially Florida and South Texas, all the way south through Central America and the northern edges of South America. They love to feed on my Lantana (Porterweed) plants shown in these photos in my garden and also love the Passionflower when available (I have none), thus its secondary name of Passion Butterfly.

The above average rain this year has helped my flowers which seems to bring more butterflies and maybe more varieties. June and July are the peak months for butterflies here, meaning they may decrease in number soon. I include two photos to show the difference in the bright orange top of wings and the underside with silver/white spots. Beautiful!

Gulf Fritillary or Passion Butterfly

 

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly.    ~Richard Bach

See also my Photo Gallery Butterflies and Moths with more than 70 species photographed here in Costa Rica.

I also have a little 7X7 inch photo book titled My First 50 Butterflies in Costa Rica.  You can preview all pages electronically for free at this link. Best viewed full screen for bigger photos.

Report on Tonight’s Surgery will come in tomorrow’s post, Tuesday.

¡Pura Vida!

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Giant White Butterfly

This name or label is the closest match found in online searches with the scientific name of  Ganyra josephina, found from South Texas all the way through Central America to northern South America. It is similar to the Felder’s White found in the book A Swift Guide to the Butterflies of Mexico and Central America with scientific name Ganyra phaloe (which name I almost gave it). Another web page had a similar butterfly labeled Godart’s White, almost identical to Felder’s, both having a little brown edge around the upper wings which mine does not have. Mine more closely matches the “Giant White” photos and descriptions online but is not in Swift’s book.

Butterflies are so difficult to identify, especially in Costa Rica where we seem to have millions of different ones! This was photographed in my garden in Atenas, Costa Rica.

See also my Photo Gallery Butterflies and Moths with more than 70 species photographed here in Costa Rica.

I also have a little 7X7 inch photo book titled My First 50 Butterflies in Costa Rica.  You can preview all pages electronically for free at this link. Best viewed full screen for bigger photos.

¡Pura Vida!