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Butterflies photographed in Costa Rica and nearby
Another new species for me and if approved will be a new species for the website I volunteer with, butterflies and moths dot org. I’m requesting the addition and I’m pretty certain of the ID based first on the Jeffrey Glassberg book and then iNaturalist website. Note that I have indicated male and female in my photos, since I managed to photograph both and there is a difference! 🙂 Here’s one shot for the email version and then all four shots below that in a little gallery . . .
The Cabbage White is a common butterfly over most of the United States, but this is my first time to see one here in Costa Rica. The first shot of four here is not as good a photo but it solidifies the identification with that lone black spot on the upper wing and also makes it a male, since the females have two black spots! 🙂
And you can take that literally since the Limón Landing Strip in on the Caribbean Beach just south of the provincial capital of Limón with a 25 to 30 minute drive to my Hotel Banana Azul in Puerto Viejo where the owner comes down and welcomes me again! 🙂 Here’s 6 arrival afternoon general shots. Though I’ve started photographing birds & butterflies, I’m saving those for later posts.
Today begins what has become almost an annual tradition of spending a week in the Southern Caribbean of Costa Rica, during September when this rainy rainforest has the least amount of rain. After trying a few other hotels, I’ve settled on Banana Azul as my favorite and it is right on the beach (one of the few!) in a favorite room with balcony overlooking the beach and hotel gardens. It is one of my most relaxing weeks of the year! This Puerto Viejo area is south, near the Panama Border and quite different from my other Caribe fave which is north of the port of Limón and in a great wetlands wildlife national park called Tortuguero.
I have just two morning bird hikes scheduled, one in the Cahuita National Park and the other in Gandoca-Manzanillo Wildlife Refuge. Otherwise I just “hangout” at the hotel and beach, walking both the beach and a forested beach road where last year I found a bonanza of butterflies! 🙂
Read on for some of my past creative endeavors from the South Caribbean of Costa Rica . . .
Continue reading “Flying to the Caribe Today!”
Another new species for me! Zilpa Longtail, Chioides zilpa, found from the Southwestern U.S. throughout Central America and in Ecuador. It is kind of amazing that in this hotter and drier year of fewer birds and butterflies for me, I am still getting about as many new species of butterflies as in a more “normal” year! Of course they are mostly new species of Skippers with definitely not as many of the more colorful butterflies, but hey! A butterfly is a butterfly! 🙂 And I am happy to be finding these new brown ones in my garden this year. And just maybe, when I go the the Caribbean side of Costa Rica in the middle of September, I’ll be blessed with a lot of new varieties of butterflies over there in a totally different climate than the Central Valley where I live. But realistically the whole globe is being affected by the extreme weather this year, so, we will see. 🙂 Here’s three photos of this one . . .
I have seen this one 4 times within the last year only in my garden. See all the different views and looks in my Tropical Checkered-Skipper GALLERY.
¡Pura Vida!
In fact, I have a whole GALLERY of Unidentified Skippers. And hopefully I will eventually get all of them identified, but until then, it is a large category of my photos! 🙂 Just one photo of this one today!
¡Pura Vida!
And Tico Times online has Good News for both the U.S. & Costa Rica with this article yesterday: Intel Investing $1.2 Billion in Costa Rica which means there will be an increase in the 3,000 employees and over 5,000 contractors already working on the research & development plus manufacturing of semiconductors here! And a lot better product than what the U.S. gets from China! 🙂 Costa Rica continues to be the technology hub of Central America and for much of all the Americas. ¡Pura vida!
In the Glassberg book, this matches what Jeffrey Glassberg calls the Bright Scintillant, a Calephelis Species, but my butterfly websites don’t list it as an official species, so I continue to list it in the next closest match, Rounded Metalmark, Calephelis perditalis, though I think it should be listed as a separate subspecies. Most of the characteristics of these two are the same with the Bright Scintillant obviously being brighter and also the border fringe is brown and white checkered, while the Rounded is one solid color. But I’m not in charge of naming butterflies, so I label them the best I can with what information I do have. 🙂 Here’s four shots of one recently in my garden and be aware that he is tiny, only a little larger than my thumbnail . . .
That’s not a carnival ride or some crazy new dance, but the common name for a Skipper Butterfly with the scientific name of Polites vibex, Whirlabout. And I know you probably think these two photos are of different butterflies, and though they are of different individuals of different sizes, they are the same species, with the folded wings the lighter color and the open wings orange and dark brown for males and all-brown for females. The other times I have photographed one in my garden, he looks a little darker or brighter orange than these, as you can see in my Whirlabout Gallery, but I’m fairly confident of my ID each time. There is no end to new discoveries with butterflies! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
Yes, I too think it is probably one of the thousands of brown Skippers, but all the books and websites making ID dependent on the wing patterns with top and side views, this “in your face” photo does not help me to identify him! But I still thought it an interesting photo worth sharing! 🙂
Depending on what you think it is, check out what else is in my Costa Rica Galleries on:
¡Pura Vida!