Believe it or not I caught my first lepidoptera today! It was a mini, pale yellow moth. Even though this wasn’t what  I was ideally trying to catch, this was still a win! Now I have my eyes on a much larger prize: one of the butterflies on my taxon ID sheet.

Today, I saw SO MANY BUTTERFLIES. We spent the day hiking around the research station and setting up camera traps to measure the biodiversity on and off of manmade trails. I definitely noticed that the butterflies prefer the open areas like the wide paths and the open area around the research station. In these areas, I saw a variety of species including the Mexican Fritillary, Mexican Cycadian, and LOTS of Dirce Beauties. The Mexican Fritillary is quite large in comparison to the Dirce Beauty, which I hadn’t thought about. Despite all of these sightings, I don’t really have any pictures to share because whenever I saw one I would immediately take off with my net. While this was kind of embarrassing and ultimately unsuccessful, it was fun and now I know to be alert. I even got close to catching a blue morpho!! We actually saw two blue morphos today, which was so exciting! They are so huge and beautiful with their giant metallic blue wings. I hope to see one a little bit closer on our trip so that I can observe the false eye marks that they have on their underwing.

Besides these butterflies, I also hope to see or capture an image of an ocelot or a jaguar. While these are more difficult to see, we found a claw mark today that suggests there is a large cat around, and Dr. Solomon said that they have seen one before. We set up 14 cameras total in a variety of areas, and we plan to collect them when we leave. I am eager to look at mine and see what species we find!