18 years ago - Belize in June

[jshuey]

Given the recent talk of Belize in a few threads, I thought I'd post some pics from June 2003 during the early rainy season.

I'll start with a little contest of three shots of the same mud puddle at Las Cuevas - how many and what species do you see here? And this was just mud. If we had been using it to empty our bladders there would have been a bunch of skippers and smaller nymphalids at the puddle.

John

[Adam Cotton]

Lots of Eurytides philolaus and a few Eurytides with transparent forewing apex, probably epidaus, but unsure from the extreme angle.

There's something all black at the left margin of the middle photo which may be a Papilio or Battus but I can't tell from the photo.

If the photos were from SE Asia I would say it was full of Catopsilia and Appias, but I assume many of them are Phoebis species, as I have very little knowledge of C American Pieridae.

Adam.

[jshuey]

Adam nailed the Eurytides species. The Battus is probably Battus ingenuus - but who can be sure at that angle...

Also Marpesia chiron, Phoebis philia, Phoebis argante, Aphrissa statira, Rhabdodryas trite, Glutophrissa drusilla, Eurema daira?, and Hemiargus ceraunus.

j

[jshuey]

a few shots of death and destruction from that trip.
j

[trehopr1]

Wonderful photographs throughout !

The first photograph of that monster Asilid grappling what appears to be a Euglossine bee is an extraordinary shot. Boy, those fellows fear "next to nothing" in the insect world.

I also like the very next shot with what looks to be a lynx spider; another very good shot.

Thank you for sharing with us John.

[58chevy]

Those "death & destruction" shots remind me of the time I watched a dragonfly attack a tiger swallowtail (P glaucus). Two tigers were mud-puddling when the dragonfly pounced on one of them. The other one took off. I didn't have a net, but I was able to grab the dragonfly/swallowtail combo with my hands. I let the dragonfly go but held onto the swallowtail. Surprisingly, it was undamaged and now resides in my collection.

[777]

I was out on a field once and saw a big dragonfly that was flying in a strange way. I caught it with my net to see what was wrong with it, it turns out the dragonfly was dead and a robber fly was clinging onto it with its mouth parts lodged in the head. The small robber fly had been carrying this dragonfly around the whole time! The fly flew away when I caught it and the dragonfly showed no signs of being alive.

[jshuey]

Here are some of the interesting non-adult leps and insects we saw on that trip.

j

one of the aposematic Orthoptera - adults and various instars


the only cicada that would let me get close to it


those chrysomelids that go flat when they die


of course leaf cutter ants


and stingless bees


and some cats...

[jshuey]

Interested or not, I'm going to subject you to this trip. continuing with the few moth photos we took.


a normal light attracts a fair amount of stuff - Las Cuevas is off grid, so the light goes out at 10:00.


The guy - Paul - who helped me collect on this and other trips, is really an artist at heart. He collected these bugs from the light, in part to play around with multi-media creations. I'm assuming that they were glued to something at some point...


these are pretty common in certain seasons, but hard to get photos of


well hidden - given my search image for butterflies, who knows how I spotted it. Maybe I was looking for snakes?


Another - only Paul shot this photo, and he is always looking for snakes (my motto has always been, if you don't see them, then they can't see you. And I'm still alive - right?)


That said Paul sees lot's of snakes - here are a couple from that trip




Below you will find photos of every snake I saw on the trip...

[bobw]

The third photo down looks like Athis inca (Castniidae).

[jshuey]

The hairstreaks from that trip.



Strymon yojoa, Cyanophrys miserabilis, Panthiades bathildis



Arawacus sito , Strymon bazochii, Rekoa palegon



   Leptotes cassius,   Ostrinotes halciones?,  Strymon ziba


Electrostrymon hugon, Celmia celmus Arawacus togarna,



Calycopis trebula, Strymon;rufofusca, Eumaeus toxea

[jshuey]

It's intermission, time to explain the trip. This was our 9th foray into Belize, and we were just starting to understand the species pool for the country. All of our trips are designed to sample for several days at key spots across the country. Generally we pick 3-4 spots, and spend at least 4-6 full days at each spot sampling so that we get a solid feel for what is flying. We were also a bit pressed for money, so this trip was "done on the cheap" - the places we stayed were inexpensive, and we did not have a rental car (the only and last time I will ever do that in Belize!). Buses suck...

Our first stop was a facility called the Trek Stop near the Guatemalan border where you rent a very small cabin. It is located in a patch of beat-up forest, and is across the road from Xunatunich Ruins - which has better forest.


Here's Paul on the porch of our tiny cabin - two people sleep in there (and the shower is open air near the kitchen). The river ferry takes you across to the Xunantunich ruins, and the road up to the ruins. There are lots of narrow trails through the forests and lots of disturbed habitat with flowers to collect from at both spots.

From there, we hire a taxi to take us to Green Hills, Jan Merman's old place. Jan ran a butterfly farm as a tourist stop, but mostly he had his Belize collection and I wanted to see it. He had several bugs we had not yet seen ourselves, and I wanted to glean data and confirm IDs as much as possible.

We stayed in a small cabin he had that was completely full of shed termite wings - mass emergences had started with the first rains a couple of weeks before we arrived.  But is was a great place to work from, because Jan really sampled bigger bugs well, but tended to ignore smaller ones such as skippers, hairstreaks and metalmarks - so that's what we did. When Jan purchased the property, it came with a family of Guatemalans who were squatting on the property.  Jan liked having others guarding his driveway, so he kept them on and eventually used them as paid staff for his butterfly rearing operation.  They cooked for Paul and I - pretty much everything was deep fried in bacon grease - deep-fried plantains, spam, eggs - everything deep fried!  Paul has a great rapport with kids, and lent out his net to the younger generation.



Here are some shots from the butterfly house.  Jan kept it packed with Caligo and Morpho.  It was always worth the stop.  He managed to "domesticate" quite a few nice species that ordinarily would not fly during the dry season.  And the dry season is also the tourist season - so pretty important if you are a tourist trap.



We were really there to see Jan's collection.  I pulled some out of the rarest bugs and they live with me now.  But many other are still down there that I wish I could see again - now that I know a bit more about the weird records that Jan had.  The collection had no humidity control and posocids were slowly nibbling away at it.  Green Hills is off the grid, and relies on solar and wind for electricity - so the options are limited.  The strange Parides - I think Jan reared, the hairstreak is supposed to occur only in South America - not Belize (we picked up an additional record since), and the pierid, I still have not seen in Belize.

From there, staff from Las Cuevas were supposed to pick us us - but they forgot!  Jan radioed them and the came the next day.  Las Cuevas is one of those golden collecting spots - it has rich limestone forest, and just enough elevation to  add in a solid handful of "pre-montane" bugs, and it used to be cheap to stay there (not so today).





The facility (those little white spots among the trees) is surrounded by hundreds of thousands of acres of forest. The road literally ends there - but because it is a research facility, there are miles and miles of trails.. The photo was taken from the radio tower hill (middle photo) - which I include because the very first time we hung a bait trap in the middle of the tower, an Agrias amydon flew in and landed on the trap.  Because of all the metal struts inside the tower, you can't really swing a nine-foot net handle in there - and it flew off not to be seen again.  But we kept returning to Las Cuevas on the hopes of seeing it again (plus other bugs are great there) - and we always climbed that hill to hang a trap in the middle of the tower.  For 18 years, that was the only record for Belize, and I was beginning to doubt that I really saw it!

Two summers ago, on a family vacation where I was allowed to collect a little bit, I took my wife and son to Las Cuevas to see scarlet macaws.  I had just three bait traps with me, one of which I hung at the base of the radio hill along the access road and I'll be damned - an Agrias amydon landed on the side of the trap, but this time I had a clear swing and nailed it!   The next day, same thing on a trap three miles down the road - landed on the outside of the trap and walked around for a few minutes until I swept it off.

Last photo is of my patented drying stand for leps in Belize.  A tray of water (the ant moat) with four Belikin Beers holding up the bugs so that they can air dry.  On a typical trip, we would come back with three or four containers full of bugs.

John