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.

2023 June 26 evening

2023 June 26 evening
The latest sunset of the year.  About 9:20 pm PDT.  As from tomorrow, the evenings will start to draw in.  (But for a while, by less than a minute per day.)

Jeremy Tatum writes:  Still lots of butterfly activity at the Mount Tolmie reservoir, 5:00 pm.  Pale and Western Tiger Swallowtails, Lorquin’s Admirals, Painted Ladies, West Coast Lady.


Here’s another selection of interesting invertebrates from Ian Cooper:

Male Common Earwig Forficula auricularia (Derm.: Forficulidae)

 

Female Common Earwig Forficula auricularia
(Derm.: Forficulidae)
Ian Cooper
Notice the shapes of the cerci in the two sexes.

 

Common Pillbug Armadillidium vulgare  (Isopoda: Armdillidiidae) Ian Cooper

 

European Sowbug  Oniscus asellus (Isopoda: Oniscidae)
Ian Cooper

 

Banasa Stink Bug Banasa dimiata
(Hem.: Pentatomidae)
Ian Cooper

 Meadow Spittle Bug  Philaenus spumarius (Hem.: Cercopidae)
Ian Cooper

 

Meadow Spittle Bug  Philaenus spumarius (Hem.: Cercopidae)
Ian Cooper

Notice that the word “Bug” is a separate word for the three true bugs (Hemiptera), but are attached to another word in the isopods – much in the same way that we write drone fly, hover fly, etc., for true flies, but dragonfly, butterfly, stonefly, etc. for insects that are not true flies.