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 28

2016 August 28

 

   Jeremy Tatum writes:   Back from holiday in England.  Sorry for the hiatus in Invert Alert, but we are ready to get going again.  On my first full day in Sussex, England, August 11, I saw 12 species of butterfly.  This made me feel guilty, because I had arranged a day out on August 13 with David Harris, Sussex butterfly enthusiast, and I was afraid that I had seen so many species that there wouldn’t have been any left for David to show me.  How wrong I was!  On August 13 he showed me an additional 14 species – so that was 26 species in two days!   Thank you, David Harris, for setting aside a whole day to go out a-butterflying with me!

 

Now back to Vancouver Island.  Just before I left, I inadvertently missed out an observation from Gordon Hart of a Grey Hairstreak in his Highlands garden, August 6.

 

On August 8 we posted photographs from Annie Pang of a brilliantly coloured halictid bee, Agapostemon texanus.  Annie’s photo was of a male, with a banded abdomen.  Aziza Cooper managed to get a quickie photo, at Swan Lake on August 8, of a very active female – whose abdomen is the same brilliant green as the head and thorax.

 

Female Agapostemon texanus (Hym.: Halictidae)

Aziza Cooper

 

Aziza also sends a photo of a caterpillar of the Spotted Tiger Moth from the railing of the wooden boardwalk at Swan Lake, August 22.

 

 Spotted Tiger Moth Lophocampa maculata (Lep.: Erebidae- Arctiinae)  Aziza Cooper

   Liam Singh sends a photograph of a caterpillar of Cerisy’s Eyed Hawk Moth from Pedder Bay, August 22.

 

Cerisy’s Eyed Hawk Moth Smerinthus cerisyi (Lep.: Sphingidae)  Liam Singh

 

Helen Johnson sends a picture of the spectacular Banded Alder Borer from Willows Beach.  Thanks to Scott Gilmore for the identification.

 

Banded Alder Borer Rosalia funebris (Col.: Cerambycidae)  Helen Johnson

 

Jody Wells sends pictures of Woodland Skippers from Brentwood Bay

 

Woodland Skipper Ochlodes sylvanoides (Lep.: Hesperiidae) Jody Wells

 

   Woodland Skipper Ochlodes sylvanoides (Lep.: Hesperiidae) Jody Wells

  He also sends photographs of Large Heath (“Ringlet”) from Cordova Spit.

Large Heath Coenonympha tullia

(Lep.: Nymphalidae – Satyridae)

Jody Wells

Large Heath Coenonympha tullia (Lep.: Nymphalidae – Satyridae)
Jody Wells

   Aziza Cooper reports a Red Admiral and a Woodland Skipper from the tip of Sidney Island Spit, August 27.

 

We also have photos of grasshoppers and bush crickets waiting in the Invert Alert Inbox – but they will have to wait for another day, while we try to get them identified.