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.

January 25

2019 January 25

 

   Jeremy Tatum writes:  Here is an Egira hiemalis from the wall of my apartment building in Saanich this morning.


Egira hiemalis (Lep.: Noctuidae)  Jeremy Tatum

 

 

      On January 12 we posted a photograph, by Sher Falls, of a Thick-headed fly Physocephala burgessi, perched on an Ox-eye Daisy, and we speculated on whether the fly was aware of the crab spider lurking underneath the flower.  This reminded Jeremy Gatten of a very similar photograph that he took a few years ago on Mount Washington, of the same species of fly on the same species of flower, also with a crab spider there.  But this time the fly, evidently initially unaware of the spider, is by now all too very much aware of it!

 

 

Physocephala burgessi (Dip.: Conopidae) and Misumena vatia (Ara.: Thomisidae)   Jeremy Gatten