This was one of the butterflies in my garden this morning that I haven’t seen here for awhile. He is similar to te Broad-banded Swallowtail and a little bit like the Thoas & the Ornythion Swallowtails, so you have to examine the details in the photos for a good ID. 🙂
You can read about the Giant Swallowtail, Papilio cresphontes on either of these websites: butterfliesandmoths.org or the butterfliesofamerica.com, the first of which is where I will eventually post one or more of these photos, when I get caught up, and the second sight is another one I use for identification along with my favorite butterfly book, A Swift Guide to Butterflies of Mexico and Central America. The gallery below includes 2 top views, 2 bottom wing views and 2 side views or folded wings views of this beautiful big butterfly.
CLICK image to see full-width and larger . . .
¡Pura Vida!
Tomorrow, Sunday, I will introduce my next Costa Rica adventure trip.
Butterfly photo #2 looks like a big butterfly SMILE.
A great observation Larry! And why not? They certainly make me smile! And when I went back and looked at that photo, the red spot even looks like the tongue of the smiler or laugher! 🙂
And right now I’m seeing a lot more of them than birds where I live. Butterflies are fascinating and beautiful! 🙂
I just saw one of those here in Southwestern Ontario about a month ago. I wonder if they migrate back and forth or if they are a different population.
Margaret, great question! My first guess was that there might be a little of both – resident populations and migrants. Then I decided to google it and it seems that there are residents all over the Americas, North, Central and South America and that the adult only lives 6-14 days which seems to me would eliminate any migration. Thanks for bringing it up! I just learned something! 🙂
BEAUTIFUL!!!