2020 January 4

 

   Ron Flower has sent us the bad news that that the field next to the graveyard on West Saanich Road, where the big colony of Field Crescents were, is now covered with half a foot of gravel.

 

  Last night, writes Jeremy Tatum. I watched the show “Jeopardy!”, and one of the topics for questions was “Moths”.  I was sure that I was going to win a million dollars, but unfortunately knowledge of moths was not helpful for most of the questions.  However, there was one question in which they showed a picture of a geometrid caterpillar.  I forget the exact wording of the question, but basically the contestants were asked to identify it.  I thought that was a pretty tough question to ask, but I was fairly sure that it was Neoalcis calforniaria.  It had that little protruberance low down on the sides of the second abdominal segment, which I believe to be distinctive to the species.  But, I wondered, how on Earth were the contestants expected to know that?  Undeterred, one of them got the correct answer immediately.  The correct answer was “inchworm” – an answer that I wouldn’t have thought of giving in a thousand years.