Ecualeps

Everywhere we turned in Ecuador there were birds to gape at, but once in a great while one of the abundant butterflies paused long enough to be admired, even photographed. Here is a selection of what we encountered; leave a comment if you know what any of them are.

This one was feeding on a sort of woody Eupatorium at Tandayapa Lodge.

And this one…well, let’s just say that not all leps are terribly discriminating in their source of minerals.

This was quite a common butterfly in the upper Tandayapa Valley; we took to calling it a sister.

This next one may even be a sister.

 

These were all over the roads in the cloud forest.

I felt very smug when I recognized this one as an eighty-eight; of course, there are many, many different eighty-eights, so it was sort of like recognizing a bird as, oh, a tanager. Michael suggested that this one was really an “eighty-nine,” and I’m happy to go with that.