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.

2022 October 13

2022 October 13

    Just a day after Jochen Möhr photographed  Thera juniperata in Metchosin (see yesterday’s Invert Alert), one turned up in Saanich.  That’s interesting, because all the books I have consulted (writes Jeremy Tatum) give Juniper as the only larval foodplant.  Juniper is not a very common wild plant here, so presumably the moth uses cultivated garden junipers.

Thera juniperata (Lep.: Geometridae)  Jeremy Tatum

  Hallowe’en is approaching, so maybe it’s appropriate that Ian Cooper is photographing spiders along the Galloping Goose trail:

Zygiella sp. (Ara.: Araneidae)  Ian Cooper

 

Trogloneta sp. (Ara.: Mysmenidae)  Ian Cooper

 

Enoplognatha ovata  (Ara.: Theridiidae)  Ian Cooper

 

Enoplognatha ovata  (Ara.: Theridiidae)  Ian Cooper

 

Neriene digna (Ara.: Linyphiidae)  Ian Cooper

 

Philodromus dispar (Ara: Philodromidae)  Ian Cooper

 

Callobius pictus (Ara.: Amaurobiidae)  Ian Cooper

 

   A brief butterfly note from Ron Flower:  Today October 13 we went back to the McIntyre reservoir where we saw two,  maybe three sulphurs and many Cabbage Whites  – mostly on the east side of the pond.