2025 October 5
Jeremy Tatum writes: I saw a California Tortoiseshell on the Mount Tolmie Ivy patch at 4:00 pm this afternoon. Also, in the morning, two Cabbage Whites in Mount View Park.
The Ivy patch on Mount Tolmie is in spectacular full flower each year in early October, and in past years several nymphalid butterflies have been seen nectaring on it, usually in the afternoons, when it is in sunshine. One way (not the only way) to find it is to enter Mount Tolmie Park from the end of Rattenbury Place. That’s not an easy place to find on the map. Enter Fredrick Norris Road, go along Redwood Avenue and see if you can find Rattenbury Place, probably the shortest road in Saanich. At the end of the road there is a path between two houses, which looks like a private drive, but is in fact a public path going up to Mount Tolmie. If you can find that, you’ll soon find the Ivy patch, and, with luck, a nice nymphalid butterfly or so.
Those who have known me long will occasionally have heard me admonish someone for calling some insect or other a “bug”. Or you may have heard me say: “That’s not a bug, it’s a beetle.” Now this is a bug (from my Saanich apartment this afternoon):
Halyomorpha halys (Hem.: Pentatomidae) Jeremy Tatum
Invert Sightings 