Excerpts from Jim Conrad's
Naturalist Newsletter

from the February 21, 2016 Newsletter issued from Hacienda Chichen Resort beside Chichén Itzá Ruins; limestone bedrock; elevation ~39m (~128ft), N20.675°, W88.569°; central Yucatán state, MÉXICO
GOLD-STAINED SATYR

Gold-stained Satyr, CISSIA PSEUDOCONFUSA

Another species Bea has added is the handsome little satyr butterfly shown above. That's the Gold-stained Satyr, CISSIA PSEUDOCONFUSA, distributed from eastern Mexico south through Central America to Panama.

Though numerous pictures of the species can be located on the Internet, there's very little information about it other than the location and sometimes the date the pictures were taken. By reporting that our picture was taken on a mostly shaded trail through a semi-deciduous forest during the early dry season in the central Yucatan, more is being said about the Gold-stained Satyr than I was able to find online.

Satyrs and hairstreaks are very similar, except that satyrs lack the hairlike appendages hairstreaks have on their wing margins opposite their heads. The movable appendages look like antennae and might trick predators into attacking the butterfly's back wings, not the head. Satyrs seem to get along perfectly well without the hairstreaks' fake antenna, though both groups often bear conspicuous "eye spots"on their wings, which might unnerve certain predators not wanting to approach the shining eyes of a lizard or frog.