This is Island View Beach, near our fieldwork site. It is a gorgeous beach, and a rare habitat type: dune vegetation is in short supply around here.

One of the rare plants to be found on Island View Beach is the yellow sand verbena, a gorgeous dune plant with lovely-smelling flowers.

This moth, the sand verbena moth (Copablepharon fuscum) depends on the yellow sand verbena, and is endangered. Catherine is working on a blog post about the controversy surrounding this species.

On a recent outing to the beach in the daytime, I was very excited to find this robber fly, which I believe is Laphria franciscana. Wonderful blue eyes!

I have still had my eye out for spiders, and this Misumena vatia with a honeybee was a lovely find in Uplands Park.

I have been finding some bee flies lately resting on grasses. Here is one I shot with the A720IS.

This Lorquin’s Admiral we saw at Island View Beach, resting on a rose bush

Nighttime fieldwork on Cordova Spit allowed me to shoot this Ammophila against the darkening sky.

The next morning, I found this purplish copper resting on a dead flower.

I also found a beautiful potter wasp, an insect I do not often see resting on vegetation.

During nightwork on the beach, I found this mother woodlouse with a load of babies.

This sleeping aggregation of Coelioxys and Ammophila was particularly impressive. I wish I had been able to shoot hem at dawn!

Early this morning at Mt. Tolmie, I found this beautiful little cuckoo wasp sleeping on some grass.

A stinkbug against the dawn sky.

This lovely cuckoo bee is either an Epeolus or Triepeolus…I found three of them at Mt. Tolmie this morning.