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.

July 25

2015 July 25

 

   Jeff Gaskin clarifies:   It was 240 Lavenders, hence 1200 Woodland Skippers (see July 23 posting).  Don’t worry, Jeff – everyone makes arithmetic mistakes every day!  Big bunch of skippers, whatever!

 

  Annie Pang photographed the Cabbage White below at Gorge Park, July 22.

 

Cabbage White Pieris rapae (Lep.: Pieridae)  Annie Pang

 

   Scott Gilmore writes:  There was a nice surprise at my black light this morning. A Black-rimmed Prominent.

 

Black-rimmed Prominent Pheosia rimosa (Lep.: Notodontidae)

Scott Gilmore

 

 

   Val George writes:  Today, July 25, I found this long-horned beetle Xestoleptura crassicornis on my bean plants.   Also today, you might be interested to know that I almost ate (really) a Myzia subvittata. [That’s the big ladybird reported recently by Libby Avis (July 22) and Scott Gilmore (July 12 – Jeremy]. I was picking blackberries and popping them into my mouth when I noticed  –   just in time  –   that the one I was about to eat had a beetle on it.  I immediately recognized it as one I thought I`d just seen on the Invertebrate Alert.  Sure enough, when I got home and checked, that’s what it was.

Xestoleptura crassicornis (Col.: Cerambycidae)  Val George