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.

August 21

2020 August 21

 

   The Daily Photo on page B6 of today’s Times-Colonist shows a good photograph of a “black and yellow fuzzy caterpillar”.   Users of this site will recognize it as a Spotted Tiger Moth Lophocampa maculata.

 

   Ian Cooper sends photographs of a bee, kindly identified by Claudia Copley and by Matthias Buck as a megachilid Resin Bee Dianthidium sp.   This is in the same Family as the leafcutter bees, although apparently it does not share the leaf-cutting and construction habits of other  members of the Family.

 


Dianthidium sp. (Hym.: Megachilidae)  Ian Cooper


Dianthidium sp. (Hym.: Megachilidae)  Ian Cooper


Dianthidium sp. (Hym.: Megachilidae)  Ian Cooper

   Ian also sends a photograph of a Lorquin’s Admiral:

 

Lorquin’s Admiral Limenitis lorquini (Lep.: Nymphalidae)  Ian Cooper

     Jeremy Tatum writes:  The caterpillar below, shown before on August 19, is now fully grown and posed for a photograph today.  Found on Salmonberry at Blinkhorn Lake.

 


Acronicta impleta (Lep.: Noctuidae)  Jeremy Tatum

 

Jochen Möhr’s moths from Metchosin this morning:

 

1 Enypia venata

1 Eulithis xylina

4 Neoalcis californiaria

1 Sabulodes aegrotata

1 Nemoria darwiniata

 


Enypia venata (Lep.: Geometridae)  Jochen Möhr


Sabulodes aegrotata (Lep.: Geometridae)  Jochen Möhr

   Two moths from Gordon Hart in the Highlands.  On August 18 Gordon counted 20 Neoalcis californiaria.

 


Udea profundalis (Lep.: Crambidae)  Gordon Hart


Sicya crocearia (Lep.: Geometridae)  Gordon Hart