{"id":4932,"date":"2017-09-01T10:27:23","date_gmt":"2017-09-01T17:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/?p=4932"},"modified":"2017-10-12T11:49:16","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T18:49:16","slug":"september-1-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/?p=4932","title":{"rendered":"September 1"},"content":{"rendered":"
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2017 September 1, morning<\/strong><\/p>\n

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From Gordon Hart:<\/strong>\u00a0 <\/strong>Monthly Butterfly Walk<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is a reminder for the VNHS monthly butterfly walk this Sunday, September 3<\/strong>.\u00a0 We will meet at Mount<\/strong> Tolmie<\/strong> at 1 p.m<\/strong>.. You can park at the main parking lot north of the summit, or in the lot by the reservoir where we will have an initial look for butterflies and then decide where to go from there.
\nHope to see you Sunday!
\n-Gordon<\/p>\n

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Annie Pang echoes Jochen Moehr\u2019s recent comments concerning the paucity of insects.\u00a0\u00a0 Annie\u2019s concerns in particular are for bees.\u00a0 She writes:\u00a0 The folks I’m running into down at the Community Gardens and elsewhere are all remarking on the lack of bees this summer.\u00a0 We do have “some” bees, but the troubling part is they are mostly just one species of bumblebee (Bombus vosnesenskii<\/em>), and the non-indigenous Honey Bee (Apis<\/em> mellifera<\/em>), with only the very odd solitary bees, which appeared in remarkable numbers last summer.\u00a0 A few of our local gardeners did see some in early spring which were the Blue Orchard bee (Osmia lignaria<\/em>) and some Andrena<\/em> species (Mining bees rather than Mason bees), and over the last few weeks I’ve seen a handful of Megachile<\/em> (leaf-cutter bees), and 2….yep, count ’em….TWO….Anthidium<\/em> bees.\u00a0 Okay …so this may all be Chinese to most of you [more likely Latin and Greek – Jeremy Tatum], but what I’m saying here is that the native bee population is in serious trouble and there are just not that many Honey Bees to pick up the slack.<\/p>\n

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Annie continues: I have attached the best pictures of optimism I could find this summer in the shape of a wee butterfly that, during the last few weeks, has out-numbered our bees here!\u00a0 The Woodland Skipper<\/strong> has been around in very good numbers and it is a\u00a0good thing for pollination.\u00a0 Although they do not carry the same amount of pollen by any means that a bee would, they do help with pollination by their very numbers.\u00a0 And the sad lack of bees…..well, I’ve never seen so few.<\/p>\n

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Woodland Skipper Ochlodes sylvanoides <\/em>(Lep.: Hesperiidae)\u00a0 Annie Pang<\/p>\n

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Woodland Skipper Ochlodes sylvanoides <\/em>(Lep.: Hesperiidae)\u00a0 Annie Pang<\/p>\n

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Honey Bee Apis mellifera <\/em>(Hym.: Apidae) Annie Pang<\/p>\n

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Lasioglossum <\/em>sp. (Hym.: Halictidae)\u00a0 Annie Pang<\/p>\n

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Jochen Moehr sends more pictures from Metchosin, August 31.\u00a0 The first is a Tolype <\/em>sp.\u00a0\u00a0 It seems likely that the species known as T. distincta<\/em> may not be distinct from the species known as T. dayi<\/em>.\u00a0 Until this problem is sorted out, I am treating the two forms as conspecific, under the name Tolype distincta<\/em><\/strong>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Tolype distincta <\/em>(Lep.: Lasiocampidae)\u00a0\u00a0 Jochen Moehr<\/p>\n

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Ennomos magnaria <\/em>(Lep.: Geometridae)\u00a0 Jochen Moehr<\/p>\n

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Woodland Skipper Ochlodes sylvanoides <\/em>(Lep.: Hesperiidae) Jochen Moehr<\/p>\n

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Oligia divesta <\/em>(Lep.: Noctuidae)\u00a0 Jochen Moehr<\/p>\n

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Viewers will have noticed that we have had several reports and photographs of\u00a0 Neoalcis californiara<\/em><\/strong> from various places, and Libby Avis reports that she is swamped with them in Port Alberni – e.g. 22 of them at a light three days ago.\u00a0 Jochen, too, is finding them in Metchosin:<\/p>\n

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Neoalcis californiaria <\/em>(Lep.: Geometridae)\u00a0 Jochen Moehr<\/p>\n

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Jeremy Tatum writes:\u00a0 The only moth that my Saanich apartment rear door could come up with this morning was a rather worn Ipimorpha <\/em><\/strong>nanaimo<\/em><\/strong>:<\/p>\n

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Ipimorpha <\/em>nanaimo<\/em> (Lep.: Noctuidae)\u00a0 Jeremy Tatum<\/p>\n

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2017 September 1, morning \u00a0 From Gordon Hart:\u00a0 Monthly Butterfly Walk This is a reminder for the VNHS monthly butterfly walk this Sunday, September 3.\u00a0 We will meet at Mount Tolmie at 1 p.m.. You can park at the main parking lot north of the summit, or in the lot by the reservoir where we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-invertebrate-alert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4932"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5219,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4932\/revisions\/5219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}