2017  June 11

   Several butterflyers visited Eddy’s Storage (Stelly’s Cross Road, west of West Saanich Road, Brentwood Bay) to see the Field Crescents there.  There must be at least a dozen or more.   Aziza Cooper sends a photograph of one – nectaring on an Ox-eye Daisy, which is where you will most likely see one.   It would be nice to get a few more photographs, so that we can see the difference between the males and the females.  At one time the two sexes were thought to be different species, and they had different scientific names –  Phyciodes campestris and P. pratensis.  You’ll find both names in the books. To complicate things still further, some authors are now using the name P. pulchella.   Also at Eddy’s, Aziza reports a Western Tiger Swallowtail and a Cabbage White.

Field Crescent Phyciodes pratensis (Lep.: Nymphalidae)  Aziza Cooper

   Jeremy Tatum writes that there are still Painted Ladies and Red Admirals to be seen on the Mount Tolmie reservoir and around the Jeffery Pine, after about 5:30 in the evenings.  He also saw a Red Admiral on Livesay Road, Central Saanich, today.

   Jeff Gaskin writes:  The VNHS trip to Duncan produced the following highlights:  At Cowichan Station, no Margined Whites were seen but we did see a comma species, 2 Cedar Hairstreaks, 3 Red Admirals, and 4 Western Tiger Swallowtails.  At Mount Prévost the only butterfly at the top was an Anise Swallowtail,  and near the bottom were both Pale and Western Tiger Swallowtails, and 4 Western Spring Azures.  At the sewage lagoons was a Lorquin’s Admiral.  Altogether we had 8 species.

    As viewers can see, this is a pretty busy time for Invert Alert. Contributors can be a huge help if they will try to adhere to the following guidelines.

    Send observations and sightings to jtatum@uvic.ca   Send photographs as attachments in .jpg format.  Include in your report where you saw the creature (not “my backyard”  – I have no idea where your backyard is) and when  (not “yesterday”, but give the date, writing out the month in words – not 5/6/17 or 6/5/17, but June 5, 2017).  If you do not know the identity of the animal you have photographed, I will try and identify it, or get someone to do so.  But if you do know what the animal is, please say so – then I don’t have to try and identify it myself.  If you can do these things, it will be an absolutely enormous help.  

   And thank you all for your great observations and photographs of so many different sorts.  It’s really great fun.