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.

May 13

2016 May 13

 

   Jeremy Tatum shows a photograph of a Rough Prominent, Mount Tolmie, May 13. The caterpillar feeds on oak.  The hump on the back of the moth reflects its scientific name “gibbosa”, which means “hump-backed”.

 

Rough Prominent Nadata gibbosa (Lep.: Notodontidae)   Jeremy Tatum

 

 

   Jeff Gaskin and Aziza Cooper both visited Mount Tolmie on May 11, around 6 pm and 7 pm respectively, and between them they recorded:

 

Western Tiger Swallowtail – 1

Pale Tiger Swallowtail – 1

West Coast Lady – 2

Red Admiral – 2

Propertius Duskywing – 1

California Tortoiseshell – 1

    

   Aziza sends a couple of photographs from there:

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

Propertius Duskywing Erynnis propertius (Lep.: Hesperiidae)  Aziza Cooper

 

   Jeremy Tatum writes:  The West Coast Lady is a typical one.  I wonder if the second one that they saw was the strange one that I mention in the May 12 evening posting.  I am hoping that someone can get a photo of it.

 

   Annie Pang has managed to get her (and this site’s) first photograph of the year of a Western Tiger Swallowtail, at Gorge Park, May 12.

 Western Tiger Swallowtail Papilio rutulus (Lep.: Papilionidae)  Annie Pang