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 27

2018 October 27

 

    It’s Winter Moth time again!   This one was at Jeremy Tatum’s Saanich apartment this morning.   Maybe not the first one of the season, for Aziza photographed a probable, though very early, one on October 10 (see October 12 posting).  They should start to become common during November.  Try the Goldstream Park Nature House, or maybe Metchosin,  to see if you can get one of the native winter moths – Bruce’s or Danby’s.  I think in Victoria they are all likely to be the European Winter Moth.

 

European Winter Moth  Operophtera brumata (Lep.: Geometridae)  Jeremy Tatum

 

October 26

2018 October 26

 

   Val George writes:  Yesterday, October 25, I found some pupae of the Cabbage White caterpillars reported on the October 24 Alert.  This one was in a window opening.

 

Cabbage White Pieris rapae  (Lep.: Pieridae)  Val George

October 24

2018 October 24

 

   Val George writes:  During the past week or so I’ve found 15 – 20 of these Cabbage White caterpillars on the walls of my house in Oak Bay.  They’ve moved from a nearby patch of kale where they’ve been feeding  (much to my annoyance) and are presumably looking for places to pupate.

 

Cabbage White Pieris rapae (Lep.: Pieridae)  Val George

October 23

2018 October 23

 

   A lttle late for an “Alert” – but interesting enough to post anyway.  Victoria West photographed this huge beetle on Mount Douglas on August 29, 2018 at 9:44 pm.  She writes:  I was using my cell phone flashlight to navigate the pathway from the upper parking lot to the lookout platform when I saw this along the pathway. I believe it is a female, both because of its size and it appeared to be laying eggs with an ovipositor when I first saw it but it pulled it back in when the light was focussed on it.

   Thanks to Scott Gilmore for confirming its identification as a female Prionus californicus.  Scott writes:  Females tend to have antennae about half the length of the body while males are 2/3 body length. 

 


Prionus californicus (Col.: Cerambycidae)  Victoria West

 

October 21

2018 October 21

 

   Jeff Gaskin writes:  Yesterday,  October 20 at Martindale Flats just south of Garcia farms there were three or four Cabbage Whites.  Jeremy Tatum adds:  Yes, I saw two there today, plus another one at Maber Flats.  Also, several Banded Woolly Bear caterpillars at Quick’s Bottom.