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.

August 1

2106 August 1

 

NOTICE

 

   Jeremy Tatum writes:  I haven’t found anyone to take over from me while I am on holiday, Aug 9 – 26, so Invertebrate Alert will be closed during that period.  When I get back, you can send me your observations or a very few of your very best photographs of unusual invertebrates, but please don’t send me huge numbers of photographs of our most frequently photographed insects during that period.  Thanks!

 

   Annie Pang sends photographs of two flies, kindly identified by Matthias Buck.

 

Syritta pipiens (Dip: Syrphidae)  Annie Pang

 

Villa sp.  (Dip.:  Bombyliidae)  Annie Pang

 

 

   Jeremy Tatum saw a young caterpillar of Lorquin’s Admiral on willow at King’s Pond today, August 1.  And in the evening, at 6:30 pm. there was a Red Admiral on the Mount Tolmie Reservoir, near the paint blotch.   Jess Gaskin reports a Western Tiger Swallowtail , which looked to him to be in pretty bad shape, in the flower garden in Esquimalt Gorge Park.

 

   Nathan Fisk sends three photographs from Saturna Island today.  I am reproducing two of them here.  The third is of too horrific a nature (X-rated) to be shown without advance warning, and is unsuitable for children or those with a nervous disposition.   I’ll post it as soon as we have exact identities of the species involved.  Watch this site.

 

Buprestis aurulenta (Col.: Buprestidae)  Nathan Fisk

 

Lophocampa maculata (Lep.: Erebidae – Arctiinae)   Nathan Fisk