Three Years Ago Today, Part Two

Dennis and I celebrated our first New Year's Eve in Belize three years ago today. And it has been an exciting, exasperating, exhilarating, exhausting, exquisite, expensive, and expansive three years!

In 2013 we started construction of the addition to our vacation cabana to make it suitable for full-time occupancy.  Still not completed, but the end is in sight.  2016 will see us moving in.

Lots of butterflies.

Our friends Julie and Phil helped us celebrate my retirement after I spent most of 2013 commuting back and forth from Belize to Rochester for work.

The deck decked out with pennants to celebrate my retirement.

Out in the jungle behind our cabana are wild orchids.

Orchid flower stalk after the rain.

Orchid in bloom.  

Orchid seed pods.

Along the Monkey River Road we often see chachalacas.

Boom chachalaca!

 The weather is always interesting.

Waterspout at sea.

Also along the Monkey River Road are provision trees with their gorgeous blossoms

These flowers peel open like a banana to expose their showy pompom flowers.

The sea casts up its treasures at our feet.

Beautiful silver and teal blue chondrophore hydrozoans about the diameter of a bottle cap wash up now and again.

 Battles are waged in the jungle.

Male blue land crabs get feisty as mating season approaches.  The fighting claws on these huge fellows are bigger than my hand.

 Birds survey their water-side domain.

Bare-throated tiger heron looks out from a treetop along the Monkey River.  They also patrol our beach and Black Creek.

Out in the jungle are the remains of past civilizations.

Dennis in the partially restored Mayan ruins of Nim Li Punit.

The photos above are only a small hint of what Belize holds for us.  There is so much to explore and experience in our new home country.  So much to look forward to in 2016 and the years to come.

Wishing you all a peaceful, happy, and healthy New Year, where ever you are.

Time and Other Things That Fly

2013 is flitting out of our lives and making way for 2014. 

Blue morpho butterfly, always on the move, just like time. 

2013 was an eventful year for us that passed in a blur.  Dennis and Max completed their first full year in Belize and Dennis celebrated a year of being retired.  I retired at the end of June 2013 and relocated to Belize in October.  We got our car imported to Belize too.

We love Belize dragonflies because they love mosquitoes.  This isn't part of the Mosquito Coast for nothing!

We actually haven't seen too many mosquitoes around our place.  The most bothersome insects are the various flies - sand flies, red flies, bottlass (bottle ass) flies, black flies.

Fortunately the dragonflies are voracious and non-discriminating eaters of flying insects.

 I still haven't started trying to key out the dragonflies; there are so many new critters and plants to learn.  Never a dull or boring moment!

Sometimes the air is thick with dragonflies. 

They perch on every little stick or twig to soak up the sun.

Even with all the dragonflies, 2013 brought me another "first" that I could have done without - a mosquito infected me with Dengue Fever earlier this month.  That was a week of hell and then several weeks of recovery.  Seem to be just about over it now.  I think I was mosquito bitten while at the plant nursery - lots of standing water there from flooding and plant watering.

This Tropical/Couch's Kingbird is one of many that reside at our place.

They also are big eaters of insects and are quite acrobatic in their flycatching.  Great entertainment.

 Now - ringing the old year out and the new year in are 2 butterflies.  I haven't ID'ed either of them - something I can do next year!  

Old and tattered, just like 2013.

What other plans for 2014?  Well, Dennis hopes to become a Belize resident.  That means we can bring in our household goods that are currently in storage in Minnesota down to Belize without horrendous import duties.  We would like to get the construction of the addition completed and get solar panels installed.  I would like to become qualified to apply for residency.  But when you get down to it, all that is really important is that we stay healthy and happy and continue to enjoy life in this semi-functional paradise called Belize.

Fresh and pristine, just like 2014.  Notice that it seems to have its head at the top, but really its head is at the bottom.  Don't know what that means for 2014!  We shall see... 

Wishing all the readers of this blog a very Happy, Healthy, and Delightful 2014.

Swallowtails and Mimics in the Garden

Back in August I featured the gorgeous Eastern Tiger Swallowtail Butterfly, Papilio glaucus.  They have been more numerous this summer than I recall them being in past years.  A result of global climate change?  I don't know, but it surely could be.  I can't resist posting a few more photos of these beauties.

A female with the blue on the hindwing that males lack.

She is focused on nectaring on purple coneflower.  The blue shows on the upper and lower hindwing.

The 2 shots below are views of the underside and topside of an individual butterfly that looks quite dark.

It is a little tattered, but still most obviously a swallowtail of some sort.

Turns out this is a female dark phase of the Eastern Tiger Swallowtail,  Papilio glaucus.

It seems that there are only female dark phase specimens, there are no male dark phase individuals.  When viewed from the right angle, you can see hints of the yellow stripes on the forewings.  These can be confused with the Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes), except the blue on the black swallowtail is almost fused into 1 large blotch.  


Below is another dark swallowtail.  It is the Giant Swallowtail (cresphontes).  

Not very colorful from above, but the underside makes up for it.

I was not able to get a shot of the underside, but if you follow the link above, you can see that the underside is more colorful.  These are the largest butterflies in North America.


What about the underside of the dark phase Eastern Tiger Swallowtail?  You can see some nice orange spots along with some yellow and blue on the dark background.

This one is missing one tail and other pieces, too.  Amazing how well they can fly when tattered like this! 

The butterfly below also has orange and blue on a dark background.  But this one, a Red-Spotted Purple, Limenitis arthemis astyanax,  lacks tails.  This is a subspecies of a White Admiral and can hybridize with White Admirals.  It is considered a mimic of the toxic Pipevine Swallowtail.  

This one was so intent on drinking on the damp mulch I had uncovered while working on the garden path that it allowed me to move a piece of mulch that was stuck to its wing without even a flick of an antenna!

With its wings open, it is easy to see how worn it is.  Don't you love that blue iridescence of the hindwing?  I wonder if the blue looks more purple and the orange more red in fresh specimens?