July 20

   In case you were wondering….  I had incorrectly labelled the previous posting as July 18.  I have now corrected it to July 19.  There was a July 18 morning posting, but not a July 18 evening.

   Notice from Gordon Hart:

Hello Butterfly Counters,

The July count runs nine days from the third Saturday, July 21, to the fourth Sunday, July 29. You can submit a count anytime over this period, and you can do more than one count, just use a separate form for each count. In the case of repeat counts, or more than one person counting an area, I will take the highest count for each species.

Please use the form at https://www.vicnhs.bc.ca/?p=33 on the Victoria Natural History Society website. If you have a zero count, or just one or two butterflies, you can email me directly.

The count area is the same as the Christmas Bird Count circle (attached). For butterfly identification, the Garry Oak Ecosystems Recovery Team (GOERT) has a useful chart of butterflies of southern Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands: http://www.goert.ca/documents/Butterfly_ID_sheet.pdf

If you would like a suggestion for an area to count, please send me an email.

In addition to the counts, a monthly butterfly walk is held on the first Sunday of each month – the next walk will be on August 5. We start at the summit of Mount Tolmie at 1pm, and decide where to go from there. I will send out another reminder near the month-end.

Thank-you for submitting your sightings and happy counting!

Gordon Hart

Butterfly Count Coordinator

Victoria Natural History Society

Count circle map link:

http://christmasbirdcount.ca/bcvi/CBCMaps.html#VictoriaMap

Two more Metchosin moths from Jochen Möhr, kindly identified by Libby Avis.

Hesperumia latipennis (Lep.: Geometridae)  Jochen Möhr

Homorthodes hanhami (Lep.: Noctuidae)  Jochen Möhr

   Aziza Cooper writes: On July 19 I found this Woodland Skipper at Bear Hill. Also there were one Pine White, three Western Tiger Swallowtails and six Lorquin’s Admirals.  Jeremy Tatum writes: I thought I was seeing my first Woodland Skippers of the year today (July 20) at Puckle Road, Central Saanich, but on closer imspection it turned out that they were two latish Essex Skippers.

   Annie Pang sends a picture of a male halictid bee of the genus Agapostemon.

Male Agapostemon sp.  (Hym.: Halictidae)  Annie Pang