Western Pygmy-Blue, Brephidium exilis

UPDATE & CORRECTION, April 2024:

I made a big mistake when I first identified this back in 2022. The real identity is Simple Sarota, Sarota acantus. Sorry for any inconvenience! I first made the correction with a blog post April 14, 2024: Correcting a Butterfly ID. Then later decided I should make it here also.

I’m still going through photos from my visit to Chachagua Rainforest Hotel in San Ramon Canton of Alajuela Province and just discovered a new favorite that has taken a lot of work with the photos to get them visible. They are of a teeny tiny butterfly the size of a fingernail or at most my thumbnail! And with an internet search I discovered that it is a Western Pygmy-Blue, Brephidium exilis (Wikipedia article link). In my photos he/she is on the leaf of a flower and then on the stem of a flower. It is about the size of a fingernail or thumbnail, the smallest I’ve ever photographed and websites say it is one of the smallest in the world and the smallest in the Americas, found from the western U.S. south through Venezuela. They come in many color combinations and I think mine is prettier than any I saw online! 🙂 It wasn’t included in my earlier Rainforest Butterflies post because I had not processed these photos yet, made on my last day there in one of their gardens.