This early flying, distinctive butterfly has one generation a year and generally flies between March and May. The female Anthocharis sara in the photo is nectaring on Small-flowered Fringecup (see 80.).  The dark line at the base of the orange goes across the entire wing on the males, whereas this one just goes a little ways across.  Bizarrely, there are more white females in populations that are found nearer the ocean, and there are more yellow, further from the ocean.  Tower mustard (Turritis glabra) is one of the known larval food plant.

 

I haven't been able to find out a whole lot about Adela trigrapha! It has the most elegant long white antenna and the three white bars on the wings; thus both the English name and the specific name. I'd like to find a female as she has a fuzzy orange head! This species is found from California north to southern Vancouver Island.

A number of years ago, Leah started working a lot on Dragonflies and Damselflies and it was quite exciting to see her delve into a new group of organisms and begin to get to know them.  I decided that perhaps I should do the same and trying to learn the Bumble Bees would be fun.  I was completely unprepared for how challenging Bumble Bee identification would be and how interesting this group of insects are.  Couple that with increasing conservation concern for the rapid declines in some species (and rapid increases in others,  as it turns out) it made for an interesting - if challenging area.  One of the challenges is that many of our common species have different colour patterns.  This species for instance, has a number of colour forms and is  one of the species that often has a large area of orange on the abdomen. Others, like the one in the photograph here is black and yellow only, with no orange.   The black and yellow only  colour pattern is increasingly common as you move south, so that it is the predominant colour pattern in the western states.  Yellow Head (Bombus flavifrons) is an early species here, Queens start becoming active in April.   Bumble Bee identification here has been assisted greatly by the arrival of a new book in the past month:

Williams et al. 2014. Bumble Bees of North America-an Identification Guide.  Princeton University Press.  

This is a recent arrival in B.C., with the first record from the province in 2003.  Polistes dominula ( P. dominculus) spread quickly and our first record here at Leaning Oaks occurred in 2005.  This species looks superficially like our native Paper Wasps and Yellow Jackets, but they are thinner-waisted and fly with their back legs dangling, which gives them a distinctive appearance.  The make paper nests, but these lack the familar outer envelope of our Paper Wasps and Bald-faced Hornets.  Instead the honeycomb shaped paper cells are plainly visible and guarded by attendant wasps.  Biologically this is a fascinating species, with a lek breeding system, multiple founders at a colony,  worker specialisation and swarming behaviour in the fall.  The numerical increase and speed of spread is a bit alarming, and they can be at very high densities.  They feed heavily on insects, especially caterpillars and the effect of this new species on our local ecosystems is not known.  Nests are usually placed 1-2 meters above ground, often near or on human build structures.  We have seen them on cedar-rail fences, in the brackets that hold our hot tub cover, mailboxes, under picnic tables, inside bird houses, in wood bins and under deck railings.  
The paper describing the discovery of this species  in B.C. can be found here:  http://journal.entsocbc.ca/index.php/journal/article/view/82

The speckled balls that appear on the underside of some of the Garry Oaks are formed by a tiny wasp called Cynips maculipennis. The wasp lays its eggs on the bud of a Garry oak leaf before the leaves unfurl.  The small worm-like larvae are suspended in the center of the gall by radiating fibers where they develop. Their numbers are kept in check by native parasitoids and don't do any major damage to the tree. Apparently there can other species of wasps that will live within the red speckled gall as "guests". 

There is a non-native Jumping gall wasp that will cause a lot of damage to Garry oaks but it's galls are tiny and yellow -about the size of mustard seeds. We'll do a post on that species should we be unfortunate enough to find it on Leaning Oaks!