The closest shopping mall to me is City Mall in Alajuela across the highway from the San Jose Airport, the largest mall in Costa Rica and second largest in Central America (Panama has a bigger one). Like all malls everywhere, everything is more expensive than at little local stores, but it is still popular, especially with the younger generations! I go two or three times a year for things I can’t get anywhere else and to see the new Christmas decorations. I went last week for my annual photo wall calendar by CR Photographer Pucci in the big and wonderful bookstore “La Librería Internacional” and some Avery Labels at Office Depot. 🙂
The general address for my Butterflies & Moths of Costa Rica stays the same, but all the sub-galleries or individual butterfly galleries will unfortunately have new web addresses. This is because I want this gallery to be scientifically accurate to match my volunteer work with butterfliesandmoths.org. Thus each of nearly 200 individual butterfly galleries will be titled with their common name and sub-titled in smaller letters with their scientific name. Then they have been placed in folders or family galleries according to their taxonomy. Thus the first level of galleries you see on the first screen image below are the families such as Hesperiidae – SKIPPERS (35+) or the largest family in my collection is Nymphalidae – BRUSHFOOTS (79+). The individual butterfly galleries are presented inside these family folders in the taxonomic order found on butterfliesandmoths.org, making my gallery a good research tool for anyone doing research on butterflies and moths in Costa Rica! 🙂 The bad part is that all my old blog posts (before yesterday’s) that have a link to an individual butterfly gallery – that link will no longer work! So sorry! But that is the cost of scientific accuracy. Before I just had them arranged alphabetically by common name – not the best way! 🙂 To check out my Costa Rica Butterfly & Moth Photo collection, click the first page image below or go to this address: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/Butterflies-Moths
My Photo Gallery: Butterflies & Moths of Costa Rica – CLICK IMAGE to visit.
I have one of, if not the largest collections of Costa Rica Butterfly photos online that I know of at about 200 species. Before getting involved in the butterfliesandmoths website, my primary source was and still often is the excellent book A Swift Guide to Butterflies of Mexico and Central America by Jeffery Glassberg.
And I could say the same things about my CR Birds Gallery which has about 360 species and has always been arranged in taxonomic order by families based on the order found in Princeton Field Guide: Birds of Central America, my preferred bird guide now, other than eBird online.
Or you can just click this first page image and get there!
The highlight of this little trip was the large number of butterflies seen and photographed with 29 species having useable photos for the gallery. And I am still trying to catch up with posting all my butterfly species on butterfliesandmoths.org! 🙂 Butterflies rule! 🙂
There is nothing in nature that I won’t photograph, though after birds, butterflies, flowers and trees it may be the leaves of plants that attract me the most. Here’s my collection from last week’s Xandari trip as another sub-gallery in that eventual trip gallery. 🙂
Over the years here my favorite flower gardens have been the ones at Xandari because of (1) the large variety of species, (2) their placement in forest settings with architecture that is colorful and complimentary to flowers and (3) the additional wild flowers you can find on the forest trails. Earlier this year I found their match on variety of flowers at Guayabo Lodge near Turrialba, Cartago, though not arranged or laid out in as beautiful a surroundings as Xandari. And for some reason, this year Xandari seemed to have fewer flowers, especially in that front garden trail along the entry road, but certainly enough for me to make a lot of “flower art!” 🙂
One photo for the email announcement and then a gallery of some of my favorites from this short two-night stay at Xandari Costa Rica. Enjoy . . .
To me everything in nature is a work of art and that includes some very tiny any unusual insects. Here’s 5 or counting the little black dot in one photo, 6 insects that I cannot identify but are a part of the colorful nature found at Xandari Costa Rica.
Yigüirro is the Costa Rican Spanish name for the English-named Clay-colored Thrush, like “the Robin of Costa Rica” (and Americans used to call it “Clay-colored Robin”). It is also the national bird of costa Rica because the early indigenous people said it was this bird that called in the rain at the beginning of rainy season, April-May, with its beautiful, melodious songs. Nice!
I’m not seeing as many birds anywhere this year which one naturalist said was because of the change in weather (El Niña) and a much wetter rainy season this year – I don’t know. But I thought the photo below of a wasp pestering the bird and another photo of the bird eating a berry were interesting enough to share, even if not high quality photos (bad light). But first a traditional portrait . . .
. . . and I think one of these 9 is actually a moth, but I can’t find an ID. The immense variety of butterflies and moths here in Costa Rica can be overwhelming at times but is also one of the joys of being here! 🙂 It depends on which website or book you read, but with more species still being discovered here, some say there are now 1,500+ known species of butterflies and over 12,000 species of moths (not all identified), so it is not surprising that I can’t find an ID for everyone I photograph. 🙂
And as is my practice, one photo here for the emailed announcement of this post, followed by a gallery of all 9 final butterflies (maybe 2 are moths) from my visit to Xandari Costa Rica last week. I may still share some other photos from that very unique hotel in Alajuela and then back to nature shots around where I live for the next two weeks before my Caribbean trip the 19th of September. Pura vida!
. . . from my brief two-night trip to Xandari Resort in Alajuela continues to show the amazing number of butterflies at this forest hotel less than an hour away from my house! I’m still not sure of the total and have four I can’t identify, but I will share 9 or 10 more tomorrow as the final batch of butterflies from Xandari before focusing on those around my house again.
As usual, one photo here for the email announcement of the blog post, then followed online with a gallery of all 10 butterflies. And again 11 photos because I want to show the big difference in the top and bottom side of the wings of one, the Starred Oxeo, even though almost all butterflies have different patterns on top and bottom, with this one just being a more drastic difference. Enjoy!
I already knew that Xandari was good for butterflies, but really didn’t think I would photograph this many species! And I’m still processing the photos and identifying, but it now looks like about 30 species. I could share one a day for the next 30 days but that would not be fair to you who are faithful readers of this blog, so just 3 days of Xandari butterflies! 🙂
One shot for the email notice of the blog and then a gallery of all 10 with actually 11 photos because one is so different with folded wings that you must see both views! 🙂
