I earlier promised a blog post on this unique place adjacent to Esquinas Rainforest Lodge and then I will lay off posts from that area for awhile. 🙂 And begin again tomorrow doing blog posts from my garden and the community of Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica! 🙂
The University of Vienna in Austria does an exceptional amount of tropical and rainforest research with not only their professors and students, but with many guest researchers from other parts of Europe and from the USA and Latin America. Read more about this important research station on their English-language website: https://www.lagamba.at/en/ while being aware that the primary language there is German. 🙂 Austrians speak an Austrian dialect of German.
This Renata Satyr, Yphthimoides renata, was spotted on the campus of the La Gamba Field Station down the road from Esquinas Rainforest Lodge. It is a rainforest research station for the University of Vienna, Austria and that is why German is spoken in that area as much or more than English along with the Spanish of course! And I refused to put it in the headline, but this is another “first time seen” butterfly for me! 🙂 And I will do a post on the research station later. And for the butterfly enthusiasts, yes, you need the side view of Satyrs for good ID and by blowing up my one angled side shot I was able to confirm the proper eye spots and lines to assure this identity. 🙂 Another Central American butterfly!
He was not in my garden, but nearby in the neighborhood on the zinnas that are regularly regrowing year-around at 8th Ave and 3rd Street on one of my walks to town.
Tanna Longtail, Urbanus tanna, is easily confused with the Teleus Longtail, but the 5 white dots in the short white line on his wing separates him from the Teleus. Seen in my garden yesterday, though I am still seeing way fewer butterflies than usual in June.
And though these look like two different butterflies with the dark brown and light brown contrast, they are the same individual in differing light. 🙂
Maybe! Again, another yellow that is not an exact match to any in the book or online. Another one I got in my garden a few weeks ago. Nice, whatever he is! 🙂 NOTE: In 2024 I decided that this is a female Dina Yellow, Pyrisitia dina.
¡Pura Vida!
And for those following it, my Saturday morning “Coffee & Art” photo sale did very well. Of course I didn’t sell everything, but I sold a lot! 🙂 THANKS to all who came! You are appreciated!
Though I’m not seeing as many as last June, the variety of butterflies is slowly expanding in my garden. We got almost no rain in May and now it rains every afternoon, which is normal for rainy season, but if anything different this June it is maybe more rain than last year, which may or may not affect the number of butterflies. And I’m also getting fewer birds. Here’s photos of 5 different species seen in the last week.
Sometimes it feels like no two bugs are alike here, but of course that is not true, but here is another one I cannot identify and don’t remember ever seeing before, photographed with my cell phone on the bathroom floor. The long antennae remind me of the Longhorn Beetle, but nothing else about him seems to match that ID. As I tweaked each photo a little different, he sort of looks a little different in each. As always in these blog galleries, click an image to see full-width and larger.
Why I Slacked Off Blogging . . .
For more than two weeks now I’ve put all my energy into preparing my many wall art photos and many more other photo products for a one morning art sale at my house on 24 June which I’ll tell you more about in the blog over the next few days. And much of my time has been spent in going to Alajuela to pick up packages of different items being shipped here for what was first going to be a new art gallery business in town and now for my one morning “Coffee & Art!” Plus I like to label every image with information on where photographed and of course a price tag.
In addition to that one morning of “Coffee and Art,” I’m accepting art shoppers by appointment and had 3 ladies come by today with lots of compliments and $40 in sales of little things, so it sort of began today, though I will not encourage such private showings until after the Saturday Morning Coffee in another week. 🙂 And I was encouraged that one of the ladies wanted a particular sloth image in a metal print (I don’t have now) and will order it from my online gallery which I’m hoping more people will do! 🙂
Tomorrow I will feature the wall art that I hung in my living room for the sale and hoping that it will be the big attraction, while the ladies today bought tote bags and greeting cards 🙂 , so it is difficult to predict what people will like or want to spend their money on! 🙂 Stay tuned for more information on my temporary Atenas Art Gallery in my casita!
My new ABOUT Page
When I went to my ABOUT page to add a link to my temporary art gallery, I found formatting errors and a repeated paragraph, possibly due to many “upgrades” or changes in the many WordPress softwares and I couldn’t correct some errors, so just deleted almost everything and started over with the newest WP Editor and put a more recent photo of myself which is what I really look like now. 🙂 That’s the page with all the personal information and probably not a lot of people go there, but it is now updated and the menu has a link to my new temporary art gallery in Atenas. 🙂 There seems to constantly be little things like this that I need to do! But hopefully slowing down again after the June 24 art show!