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.

October 1

2016 October 1

 

   Monthly Butterfly Walk.  Weather permitting, the last Monthly Butterfly Walk of the year will take place tomorrow, Sunday October 2.  We meet at the top of Mount Tolmie, on the concrete reservoir at 1:00 pm.  All are very welcome.  There is a “special event” taking place in the area that day, so some of the roads near Mount Tolmie and UVic might be closed, so it may be well to allow for delays and aim to get to Mount Tolmie by, say, ten to one.

 

  There should still be some Cabbage Whites around, and there is always the possibility of something else.  But because we won’t expect hordes of butterflies, it is suggested that we might go to Panama Flats with the aim of finding as many “woolly bear” caterpillars as we can find.  These are furry caterpillars of moths of the subfamily Arctiinae (which means “bears”).  There are several species, though the one we are likely to find quite commonly at Panama Flats is the Banded Woolly Bear.  We should find some even if it is cool and cloudy and there are no butterflies – but if it is actually raining, we may elect to curl up at home with a good book instead.

 

  In the meantime, here is a moth that turned up at my Saanich apartment this morning:

 

Neoalcis californiaria (Lep.: Geometridae)  Jeremy Tatum

 

 

   Annie Pang sends more pictures of the tiny mildew-eating Twenty-spotted Ladybird from Gorge Park.

 

Twenty-spotted Ladybird Psyllobora vigintimaculata (Col.: Coccinellidae)

Annie Pang

 Twenty-spotted Ladybird Psyllobora vigintimaculata (Col.: Coccinellidae)

Annie Pang

 

 

   Liam Singh found the chrysalis below at Pedder Bay while he was owl-banding at night.  It is a tiger swallowtail butterfly.  Jeremy Tatum writes:  I haven’t yet learned of any reliable way of distinguishing between the caterpillars or chrysalides of the Western and Pale Tiger Swallowtails.   However, if the tree trunk is that of a willow, it is probably a Western Tiger Swallowtail, whereas if it is alder it is probably a Pale Tiger Swallowtail.

 Tiger swallowtail Papilio sp. (Lep.: Papilionidae)   Liam Singh