2016 May 24

 

    Here are some photographs of Boisduval’s Blue from Devon Parker’s trip to the clear cuts west of Spectacle Lake on May 19.  Also a Western Spring Azure from there, and two that we can’t be 100 percent sure of, but which may be Silvery Blues.   The first photograph is of a fairly battered individual, and it appears to have the marks of a bird’s bill on its wings, especially the right hindwing, and near the tornus of the right forewing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Boisduval’s Blue Icaricia icarioides (Lep.: Lycaenidae)  Devon Parker

 

 

 

Maybe Silvery Blue ? Glaucopsyche lygdamus (Lep.: Lycaenidae)  Devon Parker

 

 

    While near Spectacle Lake on May 22, Devon photographed the moth below:

 

Hemaris thetis  (Lep.: Sphingidae)   Devon Parker

 

 

   Libby Avis sends some photographs from a hike to Cous Estuary in the Alberni Valley, Saturday May 21^st.

 Buprestis aurulenta (Col.: Buprestidae)   Libby Avis

 

 

Libby writes:  Both are European species released here to control St John’s Wort.  Hard to tell apart without dissection, although Bug Guide says quadrigemina seems to be more common. We saw large numbers of them all clustered on the host plant.

 

 

 

   Annie Pang sends a photograph of a male Philodromus dispar from Victoria, May 21.

 

 

   During the two-Parker two-Jeremy expedition on May 14 to find the Johnson’s Hairstreak in the Jordan River area, we came across a handsome noctuid caterpillar on an

alder leaf. Jeremy Gatten soon after identified it as Eurois sp., and further reference to David Wagner’s book on owlet caterpillars revealed that it was almost certainly Eurois astricta.  While it initially continued to feed on alder, it very soon turned its attention to Hardhack which I had brought in for somebody else.  Here is a picture of the caterpillar.