Category Archives: Costa Rican Insects
Butterflies ID-ed
Confession – I don’t consider myself a science person. I am wildly enamored with the wildlife here and I’m known at the bed & breakfast for getting really excited about every new little creature we find. But I don’t read science journals. I’m just starting to occasionally read other butterfly blogs and I took the […]
Exciting caterpillars of every color, stripe, shape and size!
Lots happening in the caterpillar lab the last couple weeks! Found a bunch of these beautiful black & white caterpillars on a Cecropia tree right off of our balcony. We rescued all of them (as they would have almost surely become wren food otherwise) and have had fun watching them grow up! I’ve gotten […]
Our new Lab, with a side of White Face West Side Story
Oh wow has it been a full couple weeks! Here’s a few of the things happening these days! The butterfly lab is getting overhauled! Walls are getting knocked down, cement’s getting mixed on the floor, cinder blocks laid… while I stand in the middle of it all changing out grass for the morpho’s and […]
Return of the ants
. The leaf cutter ants re-invaded. Turns out one foot of the table hadn’t been put into a wide enough oil container, allowing these persistent pillagers to cross the chasm, scale the table, and plunder again. So with almost perfectly dejavu detail we re-enacted the last night’s drama (with the one notable exception that this […]
Midnight in the garden of Mariposas
8:45pm. I’m worried about my black & yellow checkered checkered caterpillar. He’s stopped eating and keeps roaming restlessly around the box rejecting his host plant bottle or on any other twig, leaf or perch I try to offer him (I think he’s looking for a place to pupate, but I really don’t know). I put […]
Hand raising mystery caterpillars
As I said in my intro blog, my passions are latin dancing, photography, Spanish and whatever happens to have currently sparked my excitement down here. Right now it’s raising caterpillars. One who makes the butterfly garden its home is the battus. We have caterpillars in the butterfly garden of course, that live there happily, eventually […]
Snakes, mystery caterpillars and other exciting finds
Living here is addicting. This sense that under any given leaf, in any tree, any tide pool, there probably is some new creature you’ve never seen before, that is intoxicating to me. Josh, my fiance, has been living here the better part of the last 10 years and yet still, at least weekly […]
Jungle Living
I have to constantly pinch myself while living here in Costa Rica. Am I really here? Is this really happening? It is, and I love it. Everything is surreal and you are constantly in perpetual motion. As soon as one project finishes the next appears. It keeps you on your toes and it keeps you […]
Diaethria Marchalii
This beautiful butterfly is most commonly encountered near human habitations, where it is a familiar sight to see individuals perched head down on buildings. Its association with human habitation is most likely due to the fact the host plant is a common secondary-succession tree species with a very wide distribution in Costa Rica. Although the butterfly […]
