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Ticking Ethics
Something well-known to the birder is the notion of ticking ethics. When are you allowed to count having seen a bird? It’s not as cut and dry as you might think. Often you get poor views of a bird; it’s bad light; the bird is flying away from you; it’s too far away; the bird’s…
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Pheromone lures
I thought I’d make a quick post about moth pheromone lures. My experience is limited but perhaps it may be of use to some people. I’ve been setting up light traps and sheets for about 6 years, but this year I thought I’d focus on diurnal species and try lures as a complement to the…
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Clearwings!
At long last my pheromone traps paid off, yielding no less than 4 individuals this afternoon: 3 Albuna pyramidalis (fireweed clearwing moth) and a lone Synanthedon novaroensis (Douglas-fir pitch moth). Frankly I’m so relieved. I ordered the lures back in January and I’ve tried them out here and there – no luck. I even wrote…
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Creston highlights
The last post was about the four superstars I saw on my recent month-long trip to Creston, but the following were my real highlights. Lasionycta When I fed my first observation of this genus into iNat I was shocked to see there were 16 – sixteen!? – of these species already spotted in BC. I’d…
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New potential additions to the BC Checklist
As per my last post, I spent June in Creston BC looking for new leps. During that time I saw four new potential candidates for the BC Checklist. Some were far, far out of range, but were pretty distinctive and I’m cautiously optimistic they can be ID’d by photo alone. We’ll see! I’ll include the…
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Creston, June 2024, trip report
Quick summary report of a month-long trip to Creston. I just got back last night. For this post I thought I’d just do a high-level overview, then drill down into some more specific topics in separate posts because there’s a lot to say! I chose Creston for two simple reasons: Final tally Total species: 317New…
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Alberta Lep Guild: interactive iNat feature
I was recently contacted to add in the same feature I wrote for the BCLeps site: an interactive page that lists provincial lep observations and data, pulled from iNaturalist – only this time for the Alberta Lep Guild, so showing Alberta lepidoptera information. So, tada! It’s actually a free, open source script that I wrote…
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Trip report: Prince George
Yikes, this one’s a bit belated; I just haven’t had any time to sit down and write. The last couple of weeks I’ve been hell-bent on getting our back deck into a semi-functioning state so our clumsy cat stops falling through the gaps. Anyway, I spent May 4-12th up in Prince George to visit the…
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Trip report: Lillooet
I popped up to Lillooet last weekend to set up some traps. Not a bad trip – I saw 46 species of leps compared to 28 in the Okanagan, just 2 weeks ago. Things are heatin’ up out there! Day #1 The first night was a bit of a scramble – doing the the 3.5…
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Trip report: Osoyoos, Oliver
Last weekend (Apr 6-7th) I headed over to the southern Okanagan to see what early Spring leps I could find. I figured I could always fall back on birds and plants if the weather was bad. Day #1 The first night was a bit of a bust, moth-wise. When I arrived in Osoyoos it was…
BC Moths 