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 19

2018 October 19

 

   Jeremy Tatum writes:  Yesterday I showed a photograph of a lycaenid caterpillar photographed by Nathan Fisk on Beach Knotweed – a common foodplant of the Purplish Copper.    I cautioned, however, that the caterpillar more closely resembled that of a Grey Hairstreak.   I am now wholly convinced that it is indeed a Grey Hairstreak, and I have now labelled it as such.  Here is an enlargement of a second photograph by Nathan of the caterpillar.   On comparison with my photograph of a Grey Hairstreak caterpillar at    facweb.furman.edu/~snyderjohn/tatum/098-101.htm     there can now be little doubt of the identity.

 

Grey Hairstreak Strymon melinus (Lep.: Lycaenidae)   Nathan Fisk

 

   Jeremy Tatum writes:  One Cabbage White, Martindale Road, this afternoon.  Also a big, brightly-coloured moth flew past me, almost colliding with my head.  I believe it was probably a Garden Tiger Arctia caja.