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Platyedra subcinerea
Picked up my fourth lep lifer of the year this afternoon: a Platyedra subcinerea, or “Cotton Stem moth”. Or as my wife would say: “yet another boring brown moth”. It was wedged in under the fold of one of my moths sheets. Very pretty shade of brown, if you ask me, and those black marks…
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Updates; Back to the Cape
The photo above is of a Lithophane amanda (Amanda’s pinion moth), taken this morning. These are flagged as Vulnerable in BC by NatureServe, and the first time I’ve gotten one on the west side of Bowen Island. Lots of miscellaneous moth-related news! Let’s start with… UK Trip I just got back from week in the…
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Two new Eupithecia
The great warming continues. Each day brings more insects out. The last couple of weeks has added two new Eupithecia to my list. They’re a tricky genus. There are dozens in BC, and many are very hard to tell apart. Well, let’s add a couple more. The first, Eupithecia maestoso, looked sufficiently different from any…
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Spring has sprung
What a miserably wet year! But all it takes is 24 hours with moderately warm weather and hardly any rain, and hey presto: the moths come back. I had a good dozen Feralia deceptiva, three Orthosia hibisci, a Costaconvexa centrostrigaria, and a bunch of FOYs (First Of the Year): Egira crucialis, Orthosia transparens, Ectropis crepuscularia,…
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Experimenting with macro photography
This week I picked up a Tamron 90mm macro lens and flash for my Nikon D850. A diffuser from Australia is en route. After all these years I figured it’s time to take the plunge and try my hand at macro photography. Gulp. I’m not a photographer; I take a lot of a photos, but…
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BC Curated Checklist Update
Last week I released an update to the BC Leps Curated List which updates the BC list (now at 2855) and adds New Additions and Taxon Changes sections. This has been a bit of a labour of love these last few months, with the help and advice from a couple of members of the BC…
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A Quiet Start
Normally I spend the winter period reviewing the observations I made that year; swotting up on species and taxons that interest or puzzle me and prepare for the upcoming mothing year. But all the activity in the last three months ruled that out. In my day job, I ended up doing overtime over the Christmas…
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Checking-in
Just a quick note. This year’s mothing ended in a bang a good month ago once the rains started and the temperature dropped. I’d hoped to get to Lillooet one more time but it didn’t work out: house maintenance took priority. Boo. This last week I’ve been spending a little time revamping the source code…
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Trip report: Princeton, Keremeos, Aug/Sept 2024
I’ve passed through Princeton dozens of times en route to the Okanagan but never spent any time there. If I could tally up all my time in the town, 95% of it would be in Thomasina’s café and the A&W drive-through. The remaining 5% would be whizzing by in the car. So I finally took…
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Trip report: Merritt, August 2024
Time from another trip report. It’s been a busy year! Up to 617 species in BC already, and there’s plenty of time left in the year. Originally I’d booked a hotel in Princeton for the Aug 17-18 weekend but canceled it when the weather reports predicted heavy rainstorms. Of course, the day before I would…
BC Moths 