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.

September 20

2019 September 20

 

   Bud Logan sends a photograph of a black woolly bear caterpillar.  Jeremy Tatum writes:  I don’t know for sure what it is, but I am wondering if it is an all-black individual of the Banded Woolly Bear.  The width of the central orange band in this species varies, but I’ve never seen one in which the orange band is totally absent.  Anyone care to comment?

 

Maybe Pyrrharctia isabella (Lep.: Erebidae – Arctiinae)  Bud Logan

 

 

   Jochen Möhr’s moths from Metchosin this morning:

 


Tetracis pallulata (Lep.: Geometridae)  Jochen Möhr

 


Xanthorhoe defensaria (Lep.: Geometridae)  Jochen Möhr

 


Pleromelloida cinerea (Lep.: Noctuidae) Jochen Möhr

 


Pleromelloida cinerea (Lep.: Noctuidae) Jochen Möhr

 

 

   Jeremy Tatum writes:  The “Meadow” bed at the Finnerty Gardens (UVic) at the moment has massive amounts of Sedum and Verbena in flower.  These are excellent butterfly attractants.  At lunchtime today (September 20) there were two fresh-looking Painted Ladies nectaring on the Verbena.