charliedoggett.net
Butterflies photographed in Costa Rica and nearby
January to March is very windy here and maybe that is one reason for fewer butterflies, but one of the larger and more colorful ones that keeps hang on around my gardens is the Banded Peacock, Anartia fatima (my gallery link). While several Yellows fly around high in the trees and never seem to land for a photo and a few Skippers can be seen close to the ground, it is mainly these Banded Peacocks who frequent my gardens now.
¡Pura Vida!
Yesterday was a new species of birds for me and today a new species of butterflies for me, the Arita Skipper or Green-browed Skipper, Arita arita. No link to my gallery because this is the only photo in it now. 🙂 And no good article online, though there are 2 other photos on butterfliesandmoths.org and 5 more sightings from Costa Rica on the iNaturalistCR site. Not a spectacular butterfly, but one more species which brings my CR Butterflies Galleries up to 320 identified species now! 🙂
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” ~Henry David Thoreau
¡Pura Vida!
2,000 Blog/Website Visits in January! THANK YOU!
One of the services provided by my WordPress blog/website host is a monthly report of page visits on my site and it has been typical for the last few years to have around 2,000 page views of my blog/website at charliedoggett.net each month!
And though my photo gallery is a menu item on the website, it is actually separate and hosted by a different business, SmugMug.com, and they started in February 2022 counting my gallery visitors with several galleries now having had over 1,000 visitors in 2 years! And the shocker for me, as I typed this (yesterday) is that I’ve had 1,957 views of the gallery “My Home Gardens.” 🙂 Flowers are more popular than birds?! So I express my THANKS to all of you who read the blog (with more pictures than words)! 🙂 And then go on to look at my photos in the gallery! 🙂 Maybe “A picture is worth a thousand words” is a true statement after all! 🙂
Moving to Costa Rica 10 years ago and immersing myself in the incredible nature here was definitely one of the best decisions I every made! And I’m thankful for the many people who have joined me in my adventures vicariously by reading the blog posts and looking at the photos! ¡Pura Vida!
This Blomfild’s Beauty, Smyrna blomfildia (my gallery link) chose my bathroom as his place to die. He is not living in these photos of him/her on top of my toilet tank.
¡Pura Vida!
This is not the most common of the Hairstreak Butterflies, but I have seen it 3 other times before these two in my garden the other day. These photos of two different individuals show the variations in shades of green they can have. And yes, there are other species of green hairstreaks that are different in design from this one and their IDs are also not based on the shade of green which seems to vary in all the green ones.
See my Tropical Greenstreak, Cyanophrys herodotus Gallery for more photos and more shades of green! 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
This was seen just outside Roca Verde along 8th Avenue in Barrio Boqueron, though I’ve seen several in my garden in the past. It is the Tropical Checkered-Skipper, Burnsius oileus (my gallery link). I’m seeing fewer butterflies now and, if like last year, that will continue until sometime in May when the butterflies seem to start multiplying again here, with my highest past butterfly counts being in May-September.
¡Pura Vida!
This Banded Peacock, Anartia fatima (my gallery link) is the most obvious butterfly to still be around during these months of fewer butterflies. Here in the Central Valley the best time for the most butterflies is May-October which is the bulk of the Rainy Season, which I cannot explain, because they do not usually come out when raining. But now, the wind is just as big a problem and it is more frequent than the rain is during rainy season. The irony is that this is the peak tourist season until May and thus tourist see very few butterflies except those captive in the butterfly gardens. 🙂
¡Pura Vida!
As every year on New Year’s Eve, I am trying my best to narrow down my favorite photos to just 12 – pretty much impossible! 🙂 But I always do it anyway and never by the months. This year I created 6 categories of photos and chose 2 pix in each. As usual, the birds category was the most difficult to narrow down, so tomorrow I am publishing another post with the 9 runner ups in the bird category. 🙂
The Categories this year are: 1) Birds, 2) Butterflies, 3) Other Insects, 4) Other Wildlife, 5) Flowers, 6) Landscapes. And the ones labeled from “Atenas” are all from my garden except the vista from Casita del Café.
My twelve choices for 2024 will be below this one photo for the email version. They are a slideshow in the online version, so email recipients please click “Read More” below for 12 great photos! 🙂
Click this image of the first page or go directly to this web address: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2024-December-24-26-Xandari-Resort-Tacacori-Alajuela
Yes, Xandari is expensive, but it is worth it for me as I think the photos tell. Enjoy my “Nature as Art” photos that are different each time I visit there.
¡Pura Vida!
This Yellow-patched Satyr or Starred Oxeo, Oxeoschistus tauropolis (my gallery link) is not one often reported on the scientific websites, and though I’ve seen it three times now, it was always in the same place! 🙂 This one on Christmas Day 2024, again at Xandari Resort which has always been one of my better butterfly locations.
¡Pura Vida!
Colorful in both design and colors, this longtail skipper is anything but dull! See more in my GALLERY: Spot-banded Longtail. And here’s three shots from the other day . . .
