Category: Flowers

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Julia Heliconian

One of my favorite of the many orange butterflies is this Julia Heliconian, Dryas julia (linked to my gallery with much better photos) and not just because my special needs daughter was named Julianne! 🙂 Though probably related! 🙂

Depending on the light and the individual insect, the bottom of the wings or side views like below can be a beige, light tan or pale orange color rather than the bright orange always on the tops of the wings. See 2 or 3 like that in the gallery. Plus it is easy to confuse the top of the wings with the Juno Longwing I shared the other day, with only a slight design difference, though the bottom of wings are totally different between those two.

Julia Heliconian, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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Juno Longwing

The colorful Juno Longwing, Dione juno has also been called “Juno Heliconian.” Name linked to my gallery where I have a lot of photos of this beautiful butterfly. Here’s just one shot from many in August . . .

Juno Longwing, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

Correction in Yesterday’s Post

The largest of the two Spreadwing Skippers in yesterday’s post I called a Bentwing and it is actually a Giant Sicklewing. I have corrected the post if you want to go back to it at: 2 of the Many Spreadwing Skippers. Sorry, but with so many butterflies so much alike I will continue to make mistakes from time to time. And no one wrote me about this mistake, but while researching another butterfly I decided to use Google Lens on this one too and through that determined the real identification. And at least it was before I had posted the photo on butterfliesandmoths.org! 🙂

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2 of the Many Spreadwing Skippers

During the last few weeks I’ve been seeing more Skippers than any other family of butterflies and one of those “sub-families” or categories is generally called “Spreadwing Skippers” with several pages in my best butterfly book to go through for identification. They are all brown in various shades and with differing patterns, spots and/or wing shapes. Here’s two I’ve seen recently, The Giant Sicklewing (Achlyodes busirus heros) and the Panna Skipper (Ouleus panna) linked to my galleries on them with more photos there of the Panna. And just yesterday I photographed another tiny Spreadwing that I haven’t identified yet, but think is still another species. Plus you can find other Spreadwings in my Skippers Galleries, photographed in earlier years here. My collection just keeps growing and I’m now up to more than 300 species of butterflies in my Costa Rica Butterflies Galleries.

Giant Sicklewing, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Panna Skipper, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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3 Common Longtails . . .

. . . in my August garden, that is. 🙂 There are so many Skippers labeled “Longtail” (I have 16 Longtail Galleries) that it is difficult to say which is most common in Costa Rica or even in my garden, but I got photos of these three (and some more) in August, and they are 3 of the most obviously different longtails from each other, so they make the longtail post! 🙂 The three, alphabetically, with their galleries linked to their name headings . . .

Brown Longtail –  Urbanus procne

Brown Longtail, Atenas, Costa Rica

Dorantes Longtail – Urbanus dorantes

Dorantes Longtail, Atenas, Costa Rica

Esmeralda Longtail – Urbanus esmeraldus

Esmeralda Longtail, Atenas, Costa Rica

¡Pura Vida!

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White Angled-Sulphur

This other common white for my garden is not as difficult to identify because of the strongly showing veins on underside of wings and the yellow accent spots with black or brown spot inside on the upper wings. The only possible confusion is that there is a Yellow Angled-Sulphur with the underside of wings almost identical, though supposedly more yellowish while the White is usually more white and/or greenish, plus the Yellow Angled-Sulphur does not have the topside yellow accent spots. Also there is one light brown spot on the underside of the wings of both which is rounded on the White and elongated on the Yellow. Little details make the difference in identification! 🙂 Just one image here from my garden and you can see more in my White Angled-Sulphur, Anteos clorinde GALLERY (linked).

White Angled-Sulphur, Atenas, Costa Rica