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.

2024 August 15 morning

2024 August 15 morning

After a two-day drought, we have a good collection today.

      Gordon Hart photographed this splendid caterpillar in Beckwith Park yesterday (August 14):

Smerinthus  ophthalmica (Lep.: Sphingidae)   Gordon Hart

Val George writes:  These two moths were on the wall of my Oak Bay house yesterday.

Pug moth  Eupithecia sp. (Lep.: Geometridae)  Val George

Idaea dimidiata  (Lep.: Geometridae)   Val George

   Aziza Cooper writes:  Yesterday, August 14, at Cowichan Station, I saw two Margined Whites.  At Nanaimo River Road, east of Elk Trails Way, there was one Common Woodnymph. At km 12.1 at a gate for a Mosaic Forests property there were 15 or more Woodland Skippers, one Mylitta Crescent and one Sylvan Hairstreak.

Common Woodnymph  Cercyonis pegala (Lep.: Nymphalidae – Satyrinae)  Aziza Cooper

Mylitta Crescent  Phyciodes mylitta  (Lep.: Nymphalidae)  Aziza Cooper

Sylvan Hairstreak  Satyrium sylvinus
The ATC spells the specific name –us.

Margined White Pieris marginalis  (Lep.: Pieridae)  Aziza Cooper