In addition to caterpillars, I’ve now had two Caribbean Milkweed Bugs(my gallery link) on my Milkweed flowers. There are several versions of this insect including a different subspecies in North America (Oncopeltus fasciatus) while the one here is Oncopeltus cingulifer. They do not harm the plant nor the caterpillars or butterflies if around. 🙂
GoogleAI says: “They use straw-like mouthparts to feed primarily on milkweed seeds and sap. By consuming milkweed, they store cardiac glycosides in their bodies, making them poisonous or unpalatable to predators like birds. They are mostly harmless to the plant and do not attack monarch butterfly eggs or caterpillars, meaning chemical control is rarely needed.”
One of my plants is seeding profusely, so maybe they were after the tiny seeds! 🙂
The smaller of the two on one of my Milkweeds. The Feature Photo is the larger one. This one may be a juvenile or in some species the female is smaller. I don’t know.
Now I have Monarch Caterpillars on one group of Milkweeds and I expect them to eat most of the leaves like the Queen Caterpillars did a month ago and that milkweed grew right back. So whoopee! More Monarchs! 🙂 And I post my caterpillar shots in the same gallery with their butterfly, so see these and one more caterpillar from San Gerardo de Dota in my gallery Monarch!
On my August 8 Calle Nueva Hike I mostly photographed butterflies, but did get two different damselflies and this little unusual insect that I’ve only been able to narrow down to its genus, Cotton Stainer Bugs – Genus Dysdercus(my gallery link for more photos). iNaturalist gave three possible species in that genus that are all three similar, but none an exact match to mine. Thus I’m leaving it with the genus ID for now and hopefully someone on iNaturalist will be able to identify it. The large number of unique and colorful insects here is amazing, as you can see in my gallery: More Insects CR (100+ Species), linked. Note that I have separate galleries for two other major categories of insects: Dragonflies & Damselflies CR and of course my largest, Butterflies & Moths CR. 🙂
Cotton Stainer Bugs – Genus Dysdercus, Calle Nueva, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
So many of the butterflies have colors included in their names and this one is not the only one that doesn’t stick to its colors. 🙂 I’ve seen the Large Orange Sulphur(my gallery link) two or three other times, including one last month that was orange or really an orange-yellow. 🙂 But you have to admit that the name sounds better than calling it a “Large Dirty White Sulphur!” 🙂
Large Orange Sulphur, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
The Milkweeds I planted finally attracted a Monarch, but only this one on one day, while the Milkweeds are being dominated by a “flight” or “kaleidoscope” of Banded Peacocks. 🙂 I made a lot of photos with 9 shown in the gallery, Monarch (linked), along with many other Monarchs from other locations in Costa Rica with I think the best being the ones made at Maquenque Lodge this past July. Just two shots from my garden in this blog post.
This is another new species for me, a Spreadwing Skipper named Common Anastrus or Common Bluevent (my gallery linked) with more images in that gallery. Not as colorful or flashy as some I’ve seen here recently, but another important member of the Butterfly Family, photographed here on Lantana Flowers. It lives in Central America and tropical South America with Costa Rica it’s “type locality” or where it is happier (like me)! 🙂
Common Anastrus, Echelatus sempiternus, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
Costa Rica is the only place in the world where whales come from two hemispheres to give birth to their babies. Currently the whales from Antarctica are here and by December those arctic whales from off the coast of Alaska will be here for the same reason. The 46 minute video was made by a large conglomeration of volunteer scientists, underwater photographers, and nature organizations in cooperation with Costa Rica TV Channel 7 that just premiered it on TV. They now share it with the world for free from their YouTube channel, linked from the title above and embedded below . . . IT IS IN SPANISH ONLY . . .
You will enjoy the photography, even if you can’t understand Spanish! 🙂
One of the weirdest moths I’ve seen is the Titan Sphinx Moth – Aellopos titan (my gallery link) which has always been in my garden before, but this one earlier this month I saw on a Porterweed plant at the front gate of Residential Roca Verde. Some people have called them “hummingbird moths” because they hover over a flower like a hummingbird. I think they look more like a flying Shrimp! Ha, ha! 🙂
Another great discovery in my garden is this Blue Lasaia or Blue Metalmark (Lasaia sula)(my gallery link). It is the first one seen in my garden, though I saw one other back in 2022 on the lady’s Zinnias at 8th Ave & 3rd Street, with those shots also included in the above linked gallery. There are so many cool butterflies in Costa Rica! (About 1,500 species). 🙂
About 3 days ago a new species of butterfly appeared on one of my Tropical Milkweed flowers as seen in these two photos, another new species for me. The Banner Metalmark, Thisbe lycorias (my gallery link), is a striking butterfly found from Mexico south through Central America to the Western Amazonian Basin of Peru. It has also been called the “Foxface Metalmark” and one of my older books the “Fox-face Lemmark,” meaning as with many species, I struggle to keep up with multiple names, but now default to whatever iNaturalistCR is using and only rarely do they differ from BAMONA, my second-ranked online source.
Banner Metalmark, Thisbe lycorias, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
It appears in only two of my several Costa Rica butterfly books and with limited information. So I researched the scientific name Thisbe lycorias and that’s how I came up with the headline for today’s post. In short “Thisbe” was a Babylonian forest nymph and part of their early legends, while “Lycorias” was a Greek sea nymph as part of their early stories and myths. If you didn’t know, historically a nymph was a “minor nature Goddess” in those early tales. 🙂
From Google & Wikipedia: “When British entomologist William Chapman Hewitson first described the species in 1853, it was standard practice among European naturalists to pluck names from classical Greek and Roman texts. By pairing the Babylonian nymph Thisbe with the sea nymph Lycorias, the scientific name became a poetic nod to ancient folklore.” 🙂 With the “fairy-like” appearance of so many butterflies, that early naming practice is sort of understandable. 🙂 And I’ve started a gallery on this species with 4 shots from this one observation: Banner Metalmark, Thisbe lycorias.
