{"id":9998,"date":"2020-02-21T16:40:46","date_gmt":"2020-02-22T00:40:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/?p=9998"},"modified":"2020-02-21T16:49:30","modified_gmt":"2020-02-22T00:49:30","slug":"february-21-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/?p=9998","title":{"rendered":"February 21"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p><strong>2020 February 21<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/strong>Gordon Hart writes from the Highlands, February 20:&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/strong>The sun brought out several bee species and one butterfly. Anne-Marie saw it perched briefly and I was able to get fleeting glimpses in flight, and at a distance it appeared to be dark orange-brown and black . We are pretty sure it   was a <strong>California Tortoiseshell<\/strong>. &nbsp;Unfortunately, I could not relocate it for a photo. The bees were more obliging. There were several identical bumblebees, possibly  <strong><em>Bombus<\/em><\/strong> <strong><em>melanopygus<\/em><\/strong>, the Black-tailed Bumblebee. I have enclosed a photo of one on Heather flowers.  <\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thanks to Lincoln Best and Annie Pang who both concur that it is <em>B. melanopygus<\/em>, which, they write, is usually the first bumblebee to appear in spring.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;   <\/p>\n<p>  <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" style=\"width: 624px; margin: 5px;\" class=\"\" src=\"file:\/\/\/C:\/Users\/jtatum\/AppData\/Local\/Temp\/msohtmlclip1\/01\/clip_image002.jpg\">  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img decoding=\"async\" name=\"null\" title=\"pastedImage.png\" originalwidth=\"624\" originalheight=\"548\" width=\"492\" height=\"432.07692307692304\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/pastedImage-12.png\">  <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\">Black-tailed Bumblebee&nbsp; <em>Bombus melanopygus <\/em>  (Hym.: Apidae)&nbsp; Gordon Hart<\/p>\n<p>  <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2020 February 21 &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp; Gordon Hart writes from the Highlands, February 20:&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The sun brought out several bee species and one butterfly. Anne-Marie saw it perched briefly and I was able to get fleeting glimpses in flight, and at a distance it appeared to be dark orange-brown and black . We are [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9998","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\/9998","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=9998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vicnhs.bc.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}