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 14

2020 June 14

 

   Jochen’s moths from Metchosin this morning.  No photos.

 

1 Callizzia amorata 

1 Enypia packardata

2 Iridopsis emasculatum 

1 Lophocampa maculata

1 Tyria jacobaeae

1 Nadata gibbosa (same one, still there and still alive)

 

 

Lynda Dowling, from Happy Valley Herb Farm, sends via Gordon Hart a photograph of a  Mesoleuca gratulata photographed in May this year:

 


Mesoleuca gratulata (Lep.: Geometridae)  Lynda Dowling

   Claudia Copley sent the photographs below (taken by Darren Copley on June 12) of a chrysalis on the house of a friend, Chris Nation, in Gordon Head. The caterpillar that formed it was seen there in June 11, and it had formed the pupa by the following day.  This makes a nice record of breeding of a California Tortoiseshell here.   In case you are wondering, the butterfly within is facing to the left in the first photo below, and it has its back to you in the third photo.

 

California Tortoiseshell Nymphalis californica (Lep.: Nymphalidae)  Darren Copley

California Tortoiseshell Nymphalis californica (Lep.: Nymphalidae)  Darren Copley

California Tortoiseshell Nymphalis californica (Lep.: Nymphalidae)  Darren Copley

  Jeremy Tatum writes:  Today I went to Munn Road hydro line – butterfly hotspot – for a couple of hours, and I saw one Western Spring Azure – the first butterfly of any sort that I have seen since June 1.  Twelve straight days without a butterfly – I’m getting desperate!