Ok fine, I actually got back home 10 days ago now, but returned during a huge snowstorm (in March!) which knocked out power to much of Howe Sound. Then right after that I came down with the flu. So a bit of a rocky return – and why I haven’t posted sooner. But it’s sure great being back, even if there are zero – zero – moths around yet. Last night I set up the light sheets thinking I’d have some luck, but nope. Maybe tonight. Up on the Sunshine Coast I see plenty of early moths being reported so I guess it’s just a late start here this year.

The trip to Ghana was excellent, btw. I’ve logged all my lep sightings here (>350 of them); most of them butterflies. I didn’t bring light traps or sheets – it was really a birding trip.

Couple of unrelated things to mention.

First, I’ll be updating this site to convert all taxon post into pages. I was thinking about this during my trip. Pages are more concrete than posts; I update my taxon posts again and again over time, while posts are generally misc things like this one. One-offs that come and go. That’ll help organize the content more logically too. [Edit: sigh… this will have to wait. WordPress limit what you can do with the software without upgrade after upgrade which of course costs more money, so I’m going to wait until I move it off their service later this year.]

Second, I met up with the BC Leps crew last night and there was plenty of interesting stuff to go around. A couple of interesting slides were shown about definitively telling apart E. simplex and E. crucialis (quite hard at times!) and telling apart the local Hyppa species. I’ll add them to the site when I get a mo.

Tonight I’m trying to get to the bottom of why my script to generate the curated list of lep species in BC isn’t auto-updating.

Oh, and I just booked a few nights in a hotel in Osoyoos… I’m very curious to get out there and do some early-year mothing – that and see the result of the wildfire that swept through the mountains just west of the town. That was glorious habitat.