From August 4th to August 11th I again searched for individuals of Chlosyne lacinia but this time I was successful. Pictured below is a C. lacinia male mud puddling. This particular male was a very cooperative subject and circled the same stretch of road for more than half an hour. I was really quite thrilled to find them here!
C. lacinia wasn't the only Chlosyne in town however. Very similar to C. lacinia was C. melanarge (below) which I could only tell apart at close range. The main difference phenotypically (visually as opposed to genetically) is that C. melanarge has a band with a yellowish tint and lacks the white dots that most C. lacinia have.
I found some other cool butterflies there too however. Below was an unusually cooperative Siprotea stelenes. There were many of these in Mexico and El Salvador too. All are fairly fast and erratic flyers.
This is Adelpha fessona, not a bad looking butterfly itself.
I found more Anthanassa tulcis in Costa Rica (left) and I was typically surrounded by Microtia elva (right) yet another common melitaine though it's a pretty tiny butterfly.
Guanacaste was quite a bit different from Los Tuxtlas. As Guanacaste is a tropical dry forest it was of shorter stature compared to the rainforest of Los Tuxtlas. But don't let the name fool you! The dry forest can be quite wet in the wet season. In fact it rained nearly every day while I was there in August as opposed to the rainforest where it only rained once or twice in the two weeks I was there.
I'm rather paranoid about snakes, particularly venomous ones of which there are many in Costa Rica. I only happened upon one snake in my time there, a speckled racer (Drymobius margaritiferus). Fortunately it's a fairly harmless species. See if you can find it in the picture below.
