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.

2021 July 23

2021 July 23

 

   Today – another fly and another bug.   Photographed in View Royal yesterday by Cheryl Hoyle. The fly is a greenbottle,  Lucilia sp.  I think the commonest here, writes Jeremy Tatum, is L. sericata.

 

Greenbottle Lucilia (probably sericata) (Dip.: Calliphoridae)  Cheryl Hoyle

 

Rhododendron Leafhopper Graphocephala fennahi (Hem.: Cicadellidae)  Cheryl Hoyle

 

Jeremy Tatum writes:   Here are two hawk moth pupae.  The caterpillars were shown on July 12.

 

Top:  Bedstraw Hawk Moth Hyles galii (Lep.: Sphingidae)

Bottom:  White-lined Hawk Moth Hyles lineata (Lep.: Sphingidae)

Jeremy Tatum

  Butterflies featured in two of our local newspapers this week. Today’s Times-Colonist shows a butterfly that it calls a swallowtail – and it is indeed a Pale Tiger Swallowtail – so, well done, T-C!   The Oak Bay News was not quite so successful.  Its photograph of a “giant tiger swallowtail” is actually a Lorquin’s Admiral.