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A couple more shots of the Salome Yellow Butterfly I introduced June 13. It seems that June is the time when I see more butterflies than birds in my gardens 🙂 , so until my trip (July 1), that’s what I’m posting about mostly! 🙂
Though this is a repeat butterfly for the blog, these are maybe better photos than I posted back in 2020 and again on June 15 this year with some doubt then of the ID, but I’m relatively certain now that these are Cloudless Sulphur Butterflies, Phoebis sennae, butterfliesandmoths.org link. They seem to be fairly common all over North America and that website will soon start showing them in Costa Rica! 🙂
In Alajuela a couple of weeks ago while waiting on my bus I snapped this statue of dancers in a neighborhood city park where I temporarily catch my bus back to Atenas. Ticos love dancing and do in the parks a lot when bands perform, but it is rare to see any Tico this overweight! Maybe the couple is suppose to be tourists? 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
See my Alajuela Gallery for more photos from the provincial capital.
Mid-morning as I walked through the garden, June 15, these two different species of Swallowtails were the only ones flitting around the flowers or mainly just the Porter Weeds. Neither are new to me and in fact you can see that I have better photos in their respective Photo Galleries:
And their top views . . .
Continue reading “Two Different Swallowtails Sharing Flowers”
The host of My Photo Gallery is SmugMug.com and they regularly produce little short videos about photography or photographers and the little one they released this month shares in 3.5 minutes how four or fve different persons see their world through “This Lens” chronicling a growing family, promoting a cause, capturing nature like me and another the magic of outdoor sports. I thought it interesting enough to share on my blog:
My lens? I’ll just keep capturing the works of God through nature! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
The feature photo by Tom Oakley is of me many years ago on a nature photography trip in Tennessee with the Nashville Photography Club. You can read more about the history of my love of photography after retirement on my Photography Page.
This is my second year and third sighting of this butterfly in my garden over 7+ years which means he is not especially common also shown by the lack of reports online on the butterfly site. Many of the Longtail Skippers are very similar and have this bluish coloring on the body with the main difference being in the spots arrangement and the white fringe.
The leaf of a Heliconia Flower dies in my garden and I see . . .
Trumpet Pointing up Graceful Color Burnished Bronze Amply Dying Supportive Green Leaf Beauty Forever In Death
Or the story in photos . . .
Continue reading “Beauty in Death”
My second time to see this colorful butterfly was almost two weeks ago (yeah, I’m writing posts way ahead again, but will do it live daily on my trip in July). It was after breakfast, walking in my garden, when I found him. The Guava Skipper, Phocides polybius (Wikipedia link) is found from South Texas through Mexico and all of Central America down to Argentina. My only other time to see one was at Xandari Resort Alajuela for my birthday in 2019. Those photos plus these here can be seen in my Guava Skipper Gallery.
The one at Xandari was bluer than this one which is darker or close to black. And it is interesting that most of my butterfly photos at home show them on a Porterweed flower even though I have many other flowers. An obvious preference for butterflies and hummingbirds! 🙂 And by the way, they are called “Guava” because they lay their eggs on a Guava Plant, which is somewhere between a shrub and a small tropical tree. 🙂
Now here’s six shots in a slideshow for a change . . .
Continue reading “Guava Skipper”
Many of my walks to town are up this street by the Sports Park (Calle 0) and on one corner across from the park this bearded man and his dog are always there with his truck selling mostly plantains and bananas and occasionally some other fruit or vegetable, but always lots of plantains! Many people grow them in their yards and they sell cheaply in all the markets, so I can’t help but wonder how he makes a living selling something we have an over-abundance of here? Plus us foreigners prefer bananas over plantains which are larger, tougher and must be cooked to eat. Often served with a traditional breakfast here.
And if I spoke better Spanish, I would try to interview him and write his story for the blog, but though my Spanish slowly improves, I’m not up to that kind of conversation or interview yet! 🙂 And I didn’t even want to ask him if I could photograph him up close, so the below photo of him is from half-a-block away on my cell phone and the second larger image simply a crop of the first! 🙂
This is my fourth time to see one of these colorful butterflies and all but one was in my garden, with the other one at Xandari Nature Resort in Alajuela. See my Blue-winged Sheenmark Gallery or see other people’s photos at this Butterflies of America site. I found no thorough articles online except to note that they’ve been reported from SE Mexico south through all of Central America to Ecuador. In other words another of those mainly in Central America butterflies! 🙂