Yesterday morning I spent about an hour or so walking down an old favorite, “Shady Lane,” that I haven’t walked in quite awhile. It is the extension of 8th Avenue past the Roca Verde entrance in what is still a semi-rural area. Since I’m focusing on butterflies now, I waited until after 8am because they require plenty of sunshine and most of my butterfly photos are made between 8 & 2. 🙂
A juvenile Ctensaurus or Black Iguana, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica.
Below is a gallery of 16 different species of wildlife seen along this urban street and 4 of them aren’t butterflies! 🙂 Plus a slide show of some flowers and trees also seen on this tropical neighborhood safari!
The general address for my Butterflies & Moths of Costa Rica stays the same, but all the sub-galleries or individual butterfly galleries will unfortunately have new web addresses. This is because I want this gallery to be scientifically accurate to match my volunteer work with butterfliesandmoths.org. Thus each of nearly 200 individual butterfly galleries will be titled with their common name and sub-titled in smaller letters with their scientific name. Then they have been placed in folders or family galleries according to their taxonomy. Thus the first level of galleries you see on the first screen image below are the families such as Hesperiidae – SKIPPERS (35+) or the largest family in my collection is Nymphalidae – BRUSHFOOTS (79+). The individual butterfly galleries are presented inside these family folders in the taxonomic order found on butterfliesandmoths.org, making my gallery a good research tool for anyone doing research on butterflies and moths in Costa Rica! 🙂 The bad part is that all my old blog posts (before yesterday’s) that have a link to an individual butterfly gallery – that link will no longer work! So sorry! But that is the cost of scientific accuracy. Before I just had them arranged alphabetically by common name – not the best way! 🙂 To check out my Costa Rica Butterfly & Moth Photo collection, click the first page image below or go to this address: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/Butterflies-Moths
My Photo Gallery: Butterflies & Moths of Costa Rica – CLICK IMAGE to visit.
I have one of, if not the largest collections of Costa Rica Butterfly photos online that I know of at about 200 species. Before getting involved in the butterfliesandmoths website, my primary source was and still often is the excellent book A Swift Guide to Butterflies of Mexico and Central America by Jeffery Glassberg.
And I could say the same things about my CR Birds Gallery which has about 360 species and has always been arranged in taxonomic order by families based on the order found in Princeton Field Guide: Birds of Central America, my preferred bird guide now, other than eBird online.
. . . I’m pretty sure, though on my only photo of the top of wings the usual orange bars or patches are not obvious which I blame on a weak or out-of-focus photo with sun-glare! 🙂 The only other one I know of with those dual spots on both wings like these is the Cloudless Sulphur and I’ve never seen one this orange – so I’m sticking with Orange-barred Sulphur, Phoebis philea. See my Orange-barred Gallery. And below are 4 shots of today’s sighting . . .
Yesterday morning I photographed a tiny little butterfly that I knew was new for me but when I got it identified I find very few photos online and mine will become the first to appear on butterfliesandmoths.org. 🙂
The scientific name is Dynamine agacles core and the common names are either Pale Sailor, Tiny Sailor or Dainty White Sailor , depending on the source! 🙂 It was very small, like when wings folded about the size of my thumbnail or double that with wings open. Here’s five of many photos I made . . .
There are many different species of the Satyr Butterflies here in Costa Rica with the most common in my yard (on grasses, not flowers) is the Carolina Satyr. With wings folded he’s the size of my thumbnail, sitting on a blade of grass here! You can see this particular Satyr’s pattern of spots and stripes in this feature photo, while there are more than 50+ other combinations of patterns and colors in Satyrs. The second photo below that shows this same butterfly with his wings partially open and part of his plain brown top, then the third with them mostly open. Since I never got a shot of his total topside, I have a fourth photo of a different Carolina Satyr with his wings all the way open to show the simplicity of his topside compared to folded wings! 🙂
I photographed this tiny little fellow the day before yesterday, thinking it was probably another Satyr that I have a lot of in my yard now, this same size, but instead discovered another new butterfly for me, the Lucianus Metalmark, Calospila lucianus, formerly known in some places as a Carmine Grayler. (I’m fairly confident of this ID.) My photo will create another new species for the butterfly website I’m working for now. 🙂
Lucianus Metalmark, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica.
Read on to see the original photo that I cropped in on for the above image.
I thought I saw a new kind of butterfly through the kitchen window and ran out with my camera and it was just another Banded Peacock which I’ve had scads of recently. But then I saw a brownish dead leaf fly into some of the plants in my garden (flapping its wings). I had to run get my cellphone to get close enough to it. I was hoping it would be one of the Leafwing Butterflies but now I’m pretty sure it is one of the thousands of moths that look like dead leaves and I haven’t found an ID yet. Here’s the three shots I got before he flew away, all with cellphone . . .
I have been using a cheap Canon Rebel and Tamron 150-600 lens (lowest price lens this long) literally every day for 4 or 5 years and they were simply worn out with dust inside the lens (not cleanable) and parts of the camera not working including auto-focus. So day before yesterday my driver took me to San Jose and to the only authorized Canon dealer in Costa Rica where I duplicated my equipment with a newer version of each.
Then yesterday, along with other needed chores, I tried out the new combination camera/lens in my garden. Here’s one shot followed by a gallery of 8. And yes! I’m very pleased with my upgrade to newer versions of the same two instruments. 🙂 They’re easy to use and good enough quality for this old-man hobbyist without spending a fortune. 🙂 Here’s samples from my first 200 shots on the new equipment . . .
I got photos of more that just butterflies and birds in the CR Caribe! Check out these 8 weird and colorful insects from along the same beach road at Hotel Banana Azul where I photographed birds and butterflies.
Alongside the Beach Road by the hotel proved to be better for butterflies than birds, though I got several of each! 🙂 Here’s 20 different species, and maybe 3 to 5 are “lifers” or first time seen butterflies – my new passion with the slow-down of birds here.
