2025 June 2 morning

2025 June 2 morning

   After yesterday’s Monthly Butterfly Walk, Aziza Cooper went to Mount Douglas, where she saw two Red Admirals, one Painted Lady, one Anise Swallowtail, and one West Coast Lady.  Here are some of the photographs that she took there.

Anise Swallowtail  Papilio zelicaon  (Lep.:  Papilionidae) 
Aziza Cooper

Red Admiral  Vanessa atalanta  (Lep.: Nymphalidae)  Aziza Cooper

West Coast Lady  Vanessa annabella  (Lep.: Nymphalidae) 
Aziza Cooper

   We have three Lady butterflies that visit our area – Painted Lady, West Coast Lady, American Lady.  It is often thought that the largest of the pale patches in the apical area is white in the Painted and American Ladies, and orange in the West Coast Lady.  The colour of this patch alone is not sufficient to distinguish reliably between the species.  In Aziza’s Lady shown above, the patch is white – although this butterfly is unquestionably a West Coast Lady

   After yesterday’s Monthly Butterfly Walk, Gordon and Anne-Marie Hart went to Mount Tolmie, where they saw a Red Admiral, a Pale Tiger Swallowtail and three Painted Ladies.  Marie O’Shaughnessy also noted a Western Tiger Swallowtail there.  Here are some of the photographs that they took there and at Rithet’s Bog.  We start with a Painted Lady, so that viewers may compare it with Aziza’s West Coast Lady above.

Painted Lady  Vanessa cardui  (Lep.:  Nymphalidae)  Gordon Hart

Satyr Comma Polygonia satyrus  (Lep.: Nymphalidae)  Gordon Hart

Red Admiral Vanessa atalanta  (Lep.: Nymphalidae)  Gordon Hart

Lorquin’s Admiral  Limenitis lorquini  (Lep.: Nymphalidae) 
Gordon Hart

Pale Tiger Swallowtail  Pterourus eurymedon  (Lep.: Papilionidae)  Gordon Hart

  Gordon also took the opportunity of photographing a spider at Rithet’s Bog, kindly identified for us by Ian Cooper:

Slender Crab Spider  Tibellus oblongus (Ara.: Philodromidae)  Gordon Hart

  More photographs from the Butterfly Walk will be welcome.  In the meantime, Jeremy Tatum sends a photograph of the moth below, reared from a caterpillar on Stinging Nettle near Blenkinsop Lake.  Moths of the genus Hypena are often called “snout” moths, because of their long labial palpi.

Hypena californica  (Lep.: Erebidae -Hypeninae)  Jeremy Tatum