St George’s Day 2024

   Jeremy Tatum writes:  On Mount Douglas today at 4:30 pm I saw four Sara Orangetips, and, at the very top, hilltopping, were a California Tortoiseshell and a Painted Lady (the first reported to Invert Alert this year), chasing each other around the Teacup.  There was a California Tortoiseshell on the Mount Tolmie reservoir at 5:00 pm.  Did the tortoiseshell and the lady migrate here after spending the winter further south?  Or did they overwinter here?  Who knows?

At 5:30 pm I was filling my car up with gasoline at the gas station at the corner of Shelbourne and Pear Street.   My tank was half-full when I noticed, perched on the very pump that I was using, a male Ceanothus Silk Moth.  I took it home, where it allowed me only one brief photograph on the carpet of my living room.  I released it near the Famous Fence on Lochside Drive, where it was photographed in much more natural surroundings by Talia Northgrave.

Male Ceanothus Silk Moth  Hyalophora euryalus  (Lep.: Saturniidae)
Jeremy Tatum

Male Ceanothus Silk Moth  Hyalophora euryalus  (Lep.: Saturniidae)
Talia Northgrave

Aziza Cooper writes: Today, April 23, at Panama Flats there were four Cabbage Whites and one Western Spring Azure.