INVERTEBRATE ALERT
This blog provides an informal forum for terrestrial invertebrate watchers to post recent sightings of interesting observations in the southern Vancouver Island region. Please send your sightings by email to Jeremy Tatum (tatumjb352@gmail.com). Be sure to include your name, phone number, the species name (common or scientific) of the invertebrate you saw, location, date, and number of individuals. If you have a photograph you are willing to share, please send it along. Click on the title above for an index of past sightings.The index is updated most days.

June 4 afternoon

2020 June 4 afternoon

 

   Rosemary Jorna writes:  These are the spiders and bees that I was able to photograph on the Galloping Goose yesterday afternoon (between Charters & Todd Creek Trestles).  Several of the moths were sharing the Yarrow with the dining crab spider, and one  seemed unconcerned when the spider finished the meal dumping the moth over the side and turning for more of the same.  I blew on the moth and it flew. The black dust around the spider (second photograph near bottom right) is the moth scales.

 


Misumena vatia (Ara.: Thomisidae) eyeing

 Adela septentrionella (Lep.: Adelidae)

Rosemary Jorna


Misumena vatia (Ara.: Thomisidae) eating

 Adela septentrionella (Lep.: Adelidae)

Rosemary Jorna


Misumena vatia (Ara.: Thomisidae) eating

 Bombus sp. (Hym.: Apidae)

Rosemary Jorna

The next bee (identified by Annie Pang and Lincoln Best) looks safe – for the moment:

 

 


Bombus melanopygus (Hym.: Apidae)  Rosemary Jorna

 

 

 

Jeremy Tatum writes:  Below is a male Satyr Comma, underside.  The undersides of the sexes of the commas are different, although much more so in satyrus than in the other commas.  I reared two of them from caterpillar, hoping to show the undersides of the two sexes side by side – but inevitably the two turned out to be the same sex.   When I showed a caterpillar from Lochside Drive on May 22, I wrote:  “One just hopes that Saanich will not cut or spray the verges.”   When I went to Lochside Drive to release the adult butterfly, Saanich were right there, cutting the edges, with a big machine.  I spoke to the lady who was doing it, and I asked if she would spare the nettles, and I showed her the butterfly.  She was quite impressed, and she agreed to cut the vegetation on the verges only where it was seriously encroaching on the trail and impeding cyclists and pedestrians, and she did indeed keep her word.  There is hope!  The biggest danger to the nettles and caterpillars now is the large number of racing cyclists (known in the UK as Lycra Louts) who throw up large clouds of dust which covers the nettles and other vegetation.  The ordinary cyclist out for a ride is not a problem.  It’s the ones who use the trail as a racing track.

 

Male Satyr Comma Polygonia satyrus (Lep.: Nymphalidae)  Jeremy Tatum