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Though I’m not seeing as many as last June, the variety of butterflies is slowly expanding in my garden. We got almost no rain in May and now it rains every afternoon, which is normal for rainy season, but if anything different this June it is maybe more rain than last year, which may or may not affect the number of butterflies. And I’m also getting fewer birds. Here’s photos of 5 different species seen in the last week.
There seems to be more than one juvenile iguana, at different stages of development, living in or near my garden. I think that the main reason they climb my Cecropia/Guarumo Tree is to soak up the sunshine, which all reptiles need as cold-blooded creatures, but as a herbivore, he may also be eating from the leaves and flowers of this tree. The flowers of this tree are also popular with toucans which I’ve photographed in this same tree. Plus the toucans also eat young iguanas! 🙂
See my two Iguana Galleries:
I think these photos are of a Spiny-tailed, but juveniles of both species are similar, so I’m not certain.
¡Pura Vida!
And don’t forget!
Art Show at 105 Roca Verde #2
This SATURDAY, 24 June, 9-12 am
Cash, PayPal or Bank Transfers only.
I will always prefer that you order wall art directly from my online Photo Gallery which is hosted by SmugMug.com who uses professional printers to print each of these, whether on paper, canvas or my new preference of “Float-mounted Metal Print.” I ordered each of these from my gallery.
There are 11 new ones ordered especially for the new local gallery that did not get established, plus about that many more I already had. You can see them online in two places:
The feature photo is one of the bigger images, a sunset from Cancun with Costa Rica on that horizon! 🙂 And below is one of the four Red-eyed Tree Frog photos available.
¡Pura Vida!
Coffee & Art, June 24, 9-12 am
Come and Go as you please! – ¡Ven y Vete como quieras!
Sometimes it feels like no two bugs are alike here, but of course that is not true, but here is another one I cannot identify and don’t remember ever seeing before, photographed with my cell phone on the bathroom floor. The long antennae remind me of the Longhorn Beetle, but nothing else about him seems to match that ID. As I tweaked each photo a little different, he sort of looks a little different in each. As always in these blog galleries, click an image to see full-width and larger.
For more than two weeks now I’ve put all my energy into preparing my many wall art photos and many more other photo products for a one morning art sale at my house on 24 June which I’ll tell you more about in the blog over the next few days. And much of my time has been spent in going to Alajuela to pick up packages of different items being shipped here for what was first going to be a new art gallery business in town and now for my one morning “Coffee & Art!” Plus I like to label every image with information on where photographed and of course a price tag.
In addition to that one morning of “Coffee and Art,” I’m accepting art shoppers by appointment and had 3 ladies come by today with lots of compliments and $40 in sales of little things, so it sort of began today, though I will not encourage such private showings until after the Saturday Morning Coffee in another week. 🙂 And I was encouraged that one of the ladies wanted a particular sloth image in a metal print (I don’t have now) and will order it from my online gallery which I’m hoping more people will do! 🙂
Tomorrow I will feature the wall art that I hung in my living room for the sale and hoping that it will be the big attraction, while the ladies today bought tote bags and greeting cards 🙂 , so it is difficult to predict what people will like or want to spend their money on! 🙂 Stay tuned for more information on my temporary Atenas Art Gallery in my casita!
When I went to my ABOUT page to add a link to my temporary art gallery, I found formatting errors and a repeated paragraph, possibly due to many “upgrades” or changes in the many WordPress softwares and I couldn’t correct some errors, so just deleted almost everything and started over with the newest WP Editor and put a more recent photo of myself which is what I really look like now. 🙂 That’s the page with all the personal information and probably not a lot of people go there, but it is now updated and the menu has a link to my new temporary art gallery in Atenas. 🙂 There seems to constantly be little things like this that I need to do! But hopefully slowing down again after the June 24 art show!
¡Pura Vida!
And this would be my favorite “holiday” though I see every day as a “Get Outdoors Day!” 🙂 Again from the Washington Post article on strange and silly holidays that in this case I don’t see as either strange or silly! 🙂 June 10 – National Get Outdoors Day!
This day is part of a month-long U.S. celebration of the outdoors and the benefit of spending more time there. Picnic with your family at a local park. Go kayaking or paddle boarding. Ride on a bike trail you have never explored. Whatever you do, do it outdoors.
¡Pura Vida!
I got a macro lens once and found it too much trouble to use and continued to use my 600mm zoom lens to catch tiny things like some of the butterflies and the other day I tried to capture this ant on a heliconia flower which is not real detailed but it was fun trying! 🙂
See my “More Insects” Gallery for more ants and other bugs!
¡Pura Vida!
1,000 visitors viewing 2,000 pages, writing 12 comments and giving my blog 80 likes (and only other WordPress Bloggers have a “like button.”) THANKS to all the many readers of this blog! And I’m especially thankful to those living in Costa Rica who read it! ¡Pura vida! 🙂
The half dozen women putting together what was going to be a great art gallery in Atenas and I was to be one of the artists, gave up on all the setup costs and government regulations/taxes, etc. and just decided at the last minute (June 15 opening) that they will just not do it. I can understand their frustration, but it’s a big disappointment for me, especially since I’ve spent several thousand dollars on photo merchandise and even commissioned last week a big 30 cm wide basket to hold the accent pillows with my floral photos printed on them. But so goes life and I’ll figure out something to do with it all or give a lot of gifts. 🙂 And they may still do the Christmas Art Show!? If so, I’m ready! 🙂
And if you live in Atenas, call first (8410-9916), then come by my house and check out these gorgeous accent pillows, which I’ll sell from home now, along with greeting cards, coffee mugs, mouse pads, tote bags, T-shirts, and of course wall art photos! All below my cost! 🙂
As of today, 5 June, 2023, the 11 new Wall Art Metal Photos have not arrived for my pickup in Alajuela yet (Stuck in Customs!) and the only wall art immediately available are ones left over from the JIT Christmas Art Show. I’m hoping that the new Wall Art will be available when I go to Alajuela this Thursday and get the Mouse Pads that have arrived. BUT IF INTERESTED IN WALL ART, I suggest that you wait until next week and pray that Customs releases them soon! 🙂 But I do have 400 different 5×7 Greeting Cards which some people get several of for a wall “grouping” of similar images. Also, I am preparing an online photo inventory or “Atenas Gallery” of available photo items at my house with pictures, but that takes time and is not finished yet! 🙂 I will announce it here on the blog when completed.
¡Pura Vida!
I’ve been way too busy in the past month and looking forward to slowing down and spending more time photographing nature! BUT, in all the recent “busy-ness” I did walk through parts of my gardens each morning and though early for the peak of butterflies here, I’ve seen quite a variety. Here’s5 or 6 different species in my gardens recently . . .
Not really a new species, but this is first time I’ve noticed any iguana with blue lips! (Okay, I just looked in my gallery and one at Punta Leona had his whole head blue! 🙂 ) It is an immature Spiny-tailed Iguana and I have no explanation for the blue lips or earlier blue head! 🙂 Here’s 3 shots of him the other day in my Guarumo/Cecropia Tree . . .
Not as colorful as other butterflies but still an important part of the ecology of our planet where there are more insects than all other animals and people combined and the rest of the earth depends on them! 🙂 Plain Longtail Skipper, Urbanus simplicius. And for you who are identifiers, let me add that I had some trouble identifying this one, with the side view, to me, being more like the Teleus Longtail but I think the fainter white lines on the tops of the wings is what makes this one a “Plain Longtail,” along with the location of the white on his antennae. Here’s 4 shots from different views . . .
My best printed source of butterfly identification is the book A Swift Guide to Butterflies of Mexico and Central America by Jeffrey Glassberg. In that book this butterfly is labeled as a “Bright Scintillant,” but rather than giving a scientific name, it just says it is one of the “Calephelis species.” The butterfly website I volunteer for (butterfliesandmoths.org) does not have Bright Scintillant nor does its backup website, butterfliesofamerica.com, therefore I and others have put this one in “Rounded Metalmark, Calephelis peritalis,“ a part of the “Calephelis species” as the book says. But according to the Glasberg book, the white dots on the upper edges of the the forward wing make this one different from the Rounded Metalmark in the book. I do not know who is the final authority on butterfly names, but hope this one is at least made a subspecies of the Rounded Metalmark! And identification of the myriad of butterflies in Costa Rica will always have its challenges like this! 🙂 Here’s two shots of the latest I have seen of the above butterfly in my garden . . .
Continue reading “A “Bright Scintillant” or Subspecies of “Rounded Metalmark”?”