2015 May 17

   Mike Yip writes (May 16):  I was hoping for a duskywing, but I was deceived several times by a dark brown day-flying moth today on the road to Rhodo Lake (Nanoose Bay).

   Jeremy Tatum remarks:  Well that is precisely what is supposed to happen!  According to Powell and Opler: “In flight the adults could be confused with adult duskywing skipper butterflies”.  

 Euclidia ardita (Lep.: Erebidae – Erebinae)  Mik Yip

  Jeremy Tatum writes:  Here is a Cerisy’s Eyed Hawk Moth from my Saanich apartment, May 16:

   Jeremy continues:  Although we have had a great variety of creatures on this site, so far we have had very few aquatic animals, so here’s a challenge for photographers (not to say for identifiers!)  I had my first (poor!) try at photographing aquatic insects yesterday.  They were incessantly active and just would not stay still.  I eventually got some poor shots of a couple of damselflies and a beetle from Beaver Lake Ponds. 

Damselfly nymph Lestes sp. (Odo.: Lestidae) Jeremy Tatum

Damselfly nymph probably  Ischnura sp. (Odo.: Coenagrionidae) Jeremy Tatum

:

    Rob Cannings writes:  Both larvae are quite young (wing sheaths hardly developed). I assume they are all local? The first larva is in the genus Lestes, but I can’t tell which species from the photo. Lateral views of the gills and ventral views of the labium help, but in general, most damselfly and dragonfly larvae are awfully hard to identify to species from photos. The second species is in the family Coenagrionidae, and I’m guessing it may be Ischnura cervula, but I can’t be certain.

    I set Scott Gilmore perhaps an even more difficult poser by photographing an aquatic beetle larva.  He writes:  Larvae are tough but this must be Dytiscidae. There is no way I could go past that!

Beetle larva (Col.: Dytiscidae)  Jeremy Tatum

   Jeff Gaskin writes:  Sunday May 17, a Mourning Cloak flew down Wascana Street just before 3 p.m. Wascana Street is in the Gorge/Burnside community.

   Yesterday,  Saturday May 16, a check for Silvery Blues at Helmcken Road and the Island Highway. and also at the Colwood turnoff, was negative. I could not find a single one. I’m not sure if it was because it was around 4 p.m. or they just haven’t appeared yet. There’s an outside chance that they’re already finished for the season too. I’ll check again later in the week  –   I sure don’t want to miss these guys.

   And finally, to round off the day, a caterpillar and a fly.

Enargia decolor (Lep.: Noctuidae) Jeremy Tatum
 

Fly (Dip.: Tachinidae)  Jeremy Tatum

2015 May 16

   Mike Yip sends a photograph of a Silvery Blue from Mount Malahat near Spectacle Lake, May 15.

2015 May 15

MAY BUTTERFLY COUNT

REMINDER

(From Aziza Cooper)

Tomorrow begins the May Butterfly Count. The count period is from the 3rd Saturday to the 4th Sunday – nine days. There have been many good sightings lately, so with good weather we should have a productive count.

Please use the form at https://www.vicnhs.bc.ca/website/index.php/butterfly-count to submit your results. Submit a separate form for each area you count, so I can take the higher number in case of double counting.

If you’d like a suggestion about what area to count, send me an email. tanageraz at yahoo.com

Please let me know if you want to be removed from this list. If you know of anyone who would like to be added, please give them my email address.

Thanks for submitting your sightings, and happy counting! 

The monthly butterfly walk is held on the first Sunday of each month. June 7 is the next walk. For this month only, we will be going to locations in Duncan. After birding the Cowichan Bay Dock Road in the morning, we will meet at the Somenos Lake boardwalk along the Trans-Canada Highway north of Duncan at 1pm. The walk will be cancelled if the weather is cool or rainy.

A butterfly field trip, led by Mike Yip and myself, will go to Mount Cokely on June 13. We will meet at the Helmcken Park and Ride at 9am and rendezvous with Mike at the Nanoose PetroCan station at 10:30am. I’ll send out a reminder email closer to the date. Rain date is the following Saturday, June 20. Please let me know if you will be attending.

    Aziza also writes, May 14: This afternoon seven species were around the Mount Tolmie reservoir, with two more in other areas:

Hilltopping at the reservoir:

Red Admiral – 2

Painted Lady – 1 (plus 4 others elsewhere)

West Coast Lady – 1 (LIFER!)

Mourning Cloak – 1

California Tortoiseshell, very worn – 1

Pale Swallowtail – 2

Cabbage White – 1 flyby

Other parts of Mt Tolmie:

Western Brown Elfin – 2

Western Spring Azure – 4

Red Admiral Vanessa atalanta (Lep.: Nymphalidae) Aziza Cooper

West Coast Lady Vanessa annabella (Lep.: Nymphalidae) Aziza Cooper

    Val George writes: On May 14, when I opened the front door of my house in Oak Bay this Small Magpie Moth Eurrhypara hortulata flew into the house.

Small Magpie Moth Eurrhypara hortulata (Lep.: Crambidae)  Val George

    Jeremy Tatum writes:  Here are two moths that emerged today.  One, the Scallop Shell, reared from a caterpillar found on Hardhack at Munn Road (where I released the moth today) last year, and the other, a Large Yellow Underwing, dug up as a pupa from a garden in Victoria last month.

   Bill Katz sends two colour varieties of the caterpillar Erannis vancouverensis.   There must be tens of millions of these around just now – there’s barely an oak tree that doesn’t have one on every leaf in places now!  He also sends a new moth, Apamea cinefacta  for this site, and the millipede Harpaphe haydeniana, both from Goldstream Park.

Erannis vancouverensis (Lep.: Geometridae) Bill Katz

Erannis vancouverensis (Lep.: Geometridae) Bill Katz

Apamea cinefacta (Lep.: Noctuidae) Bill Katz

2015 May 14

   Jeremy Tatum writes:  No great excitement today, though I found my first Essex Skipper caterpillar of the year today, at Panama Flats.  It was not full grown – maybe about third instar.

   Scott Gilmore writes:  My Ceanothus plant sure seems to keeps me busy. The same plant that produced the Drepanulatrix moths earlier this year was part of an interesting debate after I found many leaf mines in July last year. I never managed to raise a moth to find out what they were. Last night I observed hundreds of tiny moths all over and around the plant. The moths appear to be from the family Tischeriidae.  According to Terry Harrison two grey Tischeria are known to mine Ceanothus in California so this moth is either Tischeria ceanothi, T. ambigua or an as yet unnamed species.

Tischeria sp. (Lep.: Tischeriidae) Scott Gilmore

2015 May 13

   Libby Avis writes, from Port Alberni:  Two photos of the stag beetle which we found on May 3^rd at Nile Creek Estuary near Bowser. This was confirmed to the genus Platycerus on Bug Guide.  Scott Gilmore writes:   Libby’s beetles are stag beetles in the family Lucanidae,  genus Platycerus.  Species is a little tougher but the greenish lustre, the mandibles and a few other characters suggest P. oregonensis over P. marginalis which are the two options here.

Platycerus oregonensis. (Col.:  Lucanidae)  Libby Avis

   Libby continues:   And… this Nycteola columbiana flew into the front room on May 7^th. Have only seen it here twice before, so thought you might be interested!

Nycteola columbiana (Lep.: Nolidae) Libby Avis

   Scott Gilmore writes:  The wonderful warm weather over the weekend brought out a number of interesting insects here in Lantzville. I found several families, new to me, of beetles including a Raspberry Fruitworm Beetle Byturus unicolor, in the Byturidae family, at Thimbleberry flowers, the only member of that family in Canada.

Byturus unicolor (Col.: Byturidae)  Scott Gilmore

Hundreds of dry bark beetles, Oxylaemus californicus (family Bothrideridae) were flying near where neighbours had cut down trees in the last week.

Oxylaemus californicus (Col.: Bothrideridae) Scott Gilmore

   Aulonothroscus validus a False Metallic Wood-boring Beetle from the family Thorascidae.

   A remarkable longhorn beetle, a male Holopleura marginata (family Cerambycidae) was found sitting on a dandelion.

Holopleura marginata (Col.: Cerambycidae)  Scott Gilmore

A species of Leaf Rolling beetle (family Attelabidae) from the genus Merhynchites.

   Most surprising of all was finding my first ever Featherwing Beetle (family Ptiliidae). This family has the smallest beetles in the world, many of them with strange life histories like parthenogenic reproduction so that some species are only female. I was lucky to find a “bigger” one at around 1mm long but did not manage to get any good pictures. I am attaching one that shows the remarkable wing of the interesting family that I hope to find again sometime.

Featherwing beetle (Col.: Ptiliidae)

Scott Gilmore

My son and I also came across a species of Grapholita (family: Tortricidae) that I have not seen before.

Grapholita sp. (Lep.: Tortricidae) Scott Gilmore

  Jeremy Tatum writes:  Here is a caterpillar of an American Tissue Moth from Swan Lake today.  Some caterpillars will accept a wide range of foodplants.  Others are specialists.  As far as I know the Tissue Moth caterpillar feeds exclusively on Cascara Rhamnus purshiana (also known as Frangula purshiana).

    Gerry and Wendy Ansell write: We were surprised to find a Common Ringlet sheltering from the wind at Island View Beach this afternoon, May 13. 

    Jeremy Tatum writes that every book that you open puts a different adjective in front of “Ringlet”.  Since it isn’t really a Ringlet at all, I’m going to call it by its original name of Large Heath on this site – or else just use the scientific name!  Island View Beach is a good locality for the species, but May 13 certainly is a little early.

Wendy Ansell