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 22

2015 June 22

 

   Annie Pang has been busy as a bee, photographing bees.  If there are any experts out there who can identify them, please let us know!

 

Bee 1 (Hym.) Annie Pang

 

Bee2 (Hym.) Annie Pang

 

Bee 3 (Hym.)  Annie Pang

 

And she has been photographing other creatures, too:

 

European Paper Wasp Polistes dominula (Hym.: Vespidae)  Annie Pang

 

Beetle (Col.: Cerambycidae)  Annie Pang

 

And a spider on the kitchen table, identified for us by Robb Bennett, who writes: “It’s a cobweb weaver (family Theridiidae) – most likely one of the many species that used to be broadly lumped into the genus Theridion.

 

 Cobweb spider “Theridion” sp. (Ara.: Theridiidae)  Annie Pang

  

While on Mount Washington with the butterfly outing, Bill Katz photographed a few things, including the beetle below (identified for us by Scott Gilmore) and the moth.

 


Lepturobosca chrysocoma (Col.: Cerambycidae)  Bill Katz

 


Rheumaptera hastata (Lep.: Geometridae)  Bill Katz

 

 

  Mike Yip writes from Nanoose Bay:  Pristine, second generation Grey Hairstreaks are flying now. – saw 4 last week. One kindly decided to bask in my garden for an easy photo. Encountered 2 Red Admirals at the end of Cross Road yesterday. One was on its last wings but the other was intact. 

 

Grey Hairstreak Strymon melinus (Lep.: Lycaenidae)  Mike Yip

 

Red Admiral Vanessa atalanta (Lep.: Nymphalidae)  Mik Yip

 

  Aziza Cooper sends a photograph of a pair of Western Meadow Fritillaries at Mount Washington on Saturday.

Western Meadow Fritillaries Boloria epithore (Lep.: Nymphalidae) Aziza Cooper

 

  Jeremy Tatum writes that there are still (June 21) Red Admirals and Painted Ladies (some worn, some fresh) at the top of Mount Tolmie in the evenings, and he saw a very fresh Red Admiral in the Finnerty Gardens at UVic.  He remarks that he stopped at Chemainus on the way back from Mount Washington, and he noted that the nettles there have Red Admiral caterpillars on them, so we may have a bumper crop of these butterflies soon.

 

  I still have a backlog of contributions to Invert Alert – particularly a few micro moths yet to be identified, as well as some butterflies still in the queue.  I’ll get round to them a.s.a.p.