Tag: Butterflies

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Fading Flowers & Butterflies

Banded Peacock on Fading Zinnia, Atenas, Costa Rica

The little Zinnia Patch in my uphill garden is fading just as are the number and type of butterflies with the Banded Peacock being the most numerous butterflies now, along with the less-noticed Skippers and a few Yellows that seldom land. Below is a slide show of my images of the fading Zinnias and Banded Peacocks in front of my “Bird & Butterfly Bench” as I will now be more focused on the birds than butterflies for a while, though we do have some butterflies year around in our “forever Spring!” 🙂 Rainy Season has pretty much ended with only a few straggler showers in December and it’s Dry Season from now until May when things turn back to green and are covered in butterflies! While dry season has us covered in tourists! 🙂

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5 “Lifer” Butterflies

I got only half as many butterfly species this October as I did in September of last year at Hotel Banana Azul (16 vs 33), but even then I photographed 5 new species for me, all kind of plain and brownish, and all but 1 Skippers. But they still add to my butterfly photo collection with now about 305 species in my Butterflies & Moths of Costa Rica Gallery. Here’s those 5 new species from my recent Caribe trip . . .

Gold-bordered Hairstreak (Rekoa palegon),
Hotel Banana Azul, Puerto Viejo de Talamanca, Limón, Costa Rica
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3 New Species Today!

And another lovely sunrise! The two new birds are called “lifers” by birders, while the one new butterfly species is just generally called a new species! 🙂 And it is my favorite! The two new birds were identified by Merlin for the sake of any birders reading. 🙂 After I submit them to eBird, they will be reviewed and someone will notify me if they think misidentified. 🙂 The markings on both of these two birds are similar though their body builds are different and a tan color with white wing stripes is common to many species as is the white eye ring, but I’m trusting Merlin on these. 🙂 I’m now up to 10 bird species on this trip and 6 butterfly species, with there simply not being as many butterflies here this year or in October compared to my usual September trip. But I’m happy with what I’m getting and the sunrises alone are worth the trip, though I do miss hiking in Gandoca-Manzanillo & Cahuita! “Being old is not for sissies!” 🙂

Gold-bordered Hairstreak – Rekoa palegon, Hotel Banana Azul, Puerto Viejo, Limón, Costa Rica
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2 Days of Butterflies

These 6 photos of 6 species were made on April 18 & 20, processed a week later and being ahead on my blog posts, they just now make it to you! 🙂 I was really photographing a lot during the weeks before my Arenal trip and now my photos and thus blog posts are sort of backed up. But I will catch up and maybe slow down a little or be more selective in which photos I share. Sorry, but I want to share all of them! 🙂 I will put these 6 butterflies in a little gallery below this one introductory shot.

Dina Yellow, Atenas, Alajuela, Costa Rica
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Arenal Butterfly Gallery Complete

and with 3 new moth species for me and at least one new butterfly species. First, to see them all in the sub-gallery of my developing trip gallery, go to Arenal ’24 Butterflies & Moths Gallery with 15 species . . .

Click Image of 1st page of Gallery to see gallery.

Since I did a post on most of these from Arenal, I will let you look for the last minute photos in the gallery! 🙂 Though one is the featured image at top of post of a Hecale Longwing shot on my last morning there. And the birds gallery may take much longer with a lot more photos to sort through! And I think that I’m just getting slower at everything I do now. 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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More Butterflies, Last Morning

Saturday morning, both before and after breakfast, before leaving around noon, I got shots of the beautiful Hecale Longwing (Heliconius hecale) and a couple of moths with one quickly identified, using my Costa Rica Rainforest Moths book! 🙂 The other moth is unidentified, though I think he is in the Tiger Moth family. Here’s 2 shots of the Hecale and one of each moth . . .

Hecale Longwing, Arenal Observatory Lodge & Trails, Costa Rica
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Rainforest Butterflies

I only photographed 12 butterflies here this year and the photos of 3 are too bad a quality to share, but I will share the other 9 which are all but one repeats of species I’ve seen before, unless that unidentified one becomes a new species. 🙂 I did not go to the Butterfly Conservatory this year in nearby El Castillo-Arenal, or I would have more species photographed. And by the way, I consider it the best butterfly garden of the many all over Costa Rica, in case you are ever nearby. Here’s one shot for the email announcement, followed by a gallery of the 9 species . . .

Ghost Yellow, Arenal Observatory Lodge & Trails, Costa Rica
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