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Check out the now finished gallery of photos from my latest Costa Rica Adventure and second visit to Esquinas Rainforest Lodge by clicking the first page image below or go to this link: https://charliedoggett.smugmug.com/TRIPS/2023-July-1-6-Esquinas-Rainforest-Lodge
A few more butterflies I photographed that are not new for me, but still interesting . . . one for the emailed version, then a gallery of all . . .
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!
¡Pura Vida!
Though a lousy photo! It was my last photo made on the ground on this trip, just before getting on the airplane at the tiny Golfito Airport Terminal where I was waiting on the little plane to arrive inside the mostly glass building when a butterfly, Great Eurybia, flitted by and landed on the glass, inside the building, meaning terrible light for a photo, but here’s my cell phone camera effort, lightened up in Photoshop Elements 8 so that it is identifiable, just not a pretty photo! 🙂 It is my first sighting of this species, meaning I added three new butterflies on this trip! 🙂 This one found only in Costa Rica and Panama.
There is not a lot of information about this species online, but you can see the others posted on the website where these two photos will go at https://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species/eurybia-patrona or some better photos on another website. Though difficult to see in my photos, the eyes are black with a blue pupil and the orange eye-ring around it, the only Metalmark with this particular eye mark, thus a positive ID. 🙂 My collection is growing! See all my Costa Rica Butterflies Galleries – 245+ species!
¡Pura Vida!
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¡Pura Vida!
I’m slow getting all the photos processed and identifications made is why I keep coming up with new things! 🙂 This butterfly is not one I saw for the first time at Esquinas but have identified correctly for the first time, as I’m getting a little better at ID. It is a Hewitson’s Longwing, Heliconius hewitsoni that I saw in the understory deep in the forest on the Manakin Trail the other day at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge. I often compare my photos with not only my butterfly book photos, but online photos and even my own older photos which is when I discovered I had seen him before at Punta Leona but misidentified! And because the one at Esquinas was damaged and not in the best light, I am including the much better photo I made at Punta Leona for comparison and I will have to go back to all the places that photo appears and re-identify it! Whew! And because it is such a better photo, I will show it first and this is my first time to properly identify it.
Now see three weaker photos I made in the dark understory of the rainforest at Esquinas Lodge for comparison. I am now certain of this new identification and the website I volunteer for will have to add this new species because it is not now included, meaning that my photos will be the first ones on butterfliesandmoths.org. And this is not the first time I’ve introduced a new species there, thanks to the incredible variety of species in Costa Rica! Many are endemic to just Costa Rica or sometimes, like this one, endemic to Costa Rica & Panama’s Pacific Coast.
Continue reading “Another New Butterfly!”
I was happy to find a new butterfly for my collection while at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge last week, the Spot-banded Daggerwing, Marpesia merops, found only in the tropics between Guatemala and Brazil. I will share the few other more common butterflies that I photographed on this trip in another blog post, segregating this very special one! 🙂 And for those in the Golfito area, I photographed him on the gravel road leading up to the lodge, between the lodge and La Gamba Research Station.
And as long as he was anywhere near me, he never fully closed his wings for me to get a side shot or picture of the bottom of his wings, but from my books it is the same pattern in a much lighter color, sort of a whitish tan or light grayish tan with none of the black seen on the top but the white spots remain.
¡Pura Vida!
I saw him before breakfast high in a tree over the lagoon on the Manakin Trail and then after breakfast he stopped by my cabin to say hello! 🙂
For more shots from this and other trips here in Costa Rica, see my Roadside Hawk GALLERY.
¡Pura Vida!
One of my favorite Hummingbirds seen in the rainforest is the Long-billed Hermit (eBird link) found throughout Central America and the northern edges of South America. He can hover longer in one place than some hummingbirds and his tail can be long and straight or opened into a fan shape plus he seems to favor Heliconia flowers. Here’s four shots from the forest at Esquinas Rainforest Lodge.
And I’m a little late reporting on what was this past Tuesday, but thanks to those who wished me a happy birthday (July 4) from around the world! And it was, as always, happy when I’m in a rainforest! 😊 The photo is of the birthday cake the lodge made for me, decorated with local fruits and topped with a sign that translated to all English says: 83 – Happy Birthday! – Charlie – We wish you a happy birthday full of joy and you enjoy it very much. From: Esquinas Rainforest Lodge.
¡Pura Vida!
Many of the rainforest birds find berries to be a major type of food for their sustenance, like this female Orange-collared Manakin (eBird Link) which is indigenous to the Pacific Slopes of Costa Rica and Panama. Only the male has the orange collar and I had not seen him here when I wrote this post yesterday. But you can see my other photos in my Orange-collared Manakin GALLERY which includes one male I found at Carara NP in his manakin “Lek” where he dances to attract a female. I love to try and capture a photo of a bird with a berry in his/her mouth like this! 🙂
FYI: This is the morning (July 6) that I leave Esquinas Rainforest Lodge (their site link) and head back home to my simple garden and fewer wildlife in Atenas, though I will continue sharing photos from this rainforest for the next week or two. 🙂 No other guest wanted to do the mangrove boat tour, which requires at least two participants, so I did not get to do that this time. But there will be more mangroves to visit! 🙂 And this was a very relaxing week with a lot of birds and butterflies plus a visit to the La Gamba Rainforest Research Station which I will share about later.
¡Pura Vida!