2015 November 22

   Scott Gilmore writes from Upper Lantzville:  I was surprised to find an Aquatic Leaf Beetle sitting on my garbage this afternoon. It is a species of Plateumaris (family: Chrysomelidae) but I am not sure which species. 

Aquatic leaf beetle Plateumaris (Col.: Chrysomelidae)  Scott Gilmore

     Jeremy Tatum writes:  There is a rare British butterfly in Britain called the Large Tortoiseshell.   Recently that species and another very similar, continental European species called the Scarce Tortoiseshell have turned up in Sussex on the south coast of England.  There has been some discussion on the Sussex butterfly site about the subtle distinctions between the species.  It occurred to me that our California Tortoiseshell is also very similar indeed – so similar that one might regard it as conspecific were it not for the huge distance between here and there.  Just to add to the discussion, last year I sent them a picture (by Wendy Ansell) of the California Tortoiseshell, but it didn’t raise any discussion.  The discussion about Tortoiseshell identification came up again last week so I sent them a photo (by Val George) of another California Tortoiseshell.  They posted it and said it was sent by Jeremy Tatum (Victoria Natural History Society).  I don’t know how they had heard of VNHS or that I was a member of it, but when you click on VNHS on their site it sends you to our Invert Alert!   So we are now known across the pond!  The Sussex site (on which I originally modelled ours) is at 

www.sussex-butterflies.org.uk/sightings.html

You can click on VNHS there as a roudabout way of getting to Invert Alert – though it’s also an excellent site itself quite apart from that!  Incidentally, if you see any references to BC on the Sussex site, BC stands for Butterfly Conservation.