Saturday mid-morning I returned home from filming shorebirds at dawn to find an extravaganza of winged wonders in our garden. The weather was gloriously warm and sunny, filming the birds had been a great success, and seeing all these creatures flying around our front dooryard garden was the best kind of morning greeting!
Mama and Papa Carolina Wrens were zipping to and from the nest feeding their hungry hatchlings every kind of insect imaginable, a nearly whole Canadian Tiger Swallowtail was pausing to drink nectar from the butterfly bushes, our resident pair of fledgling Ruby-throated Hummingbirds were whirring about the Rose of Sharon, half a dozen male Monarchs were patrolling the milkweed patches, and two visitors I hadn’t seen in our garden for some time–a newly emerged Red-spotted Purple Butterfly and a Hummingbird Clearing Moth (Hemaris thysbe)
Hummingbird Moths have been described as resembling a tiny flying lobster or an enormous furry bee and are often confused with Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. Not only do Hummingbird Clearwing Moths share similar coloring to that of RTHumminbirds, perhaps the confusion stems from a characteristic behavior of the clearwing moths, which is a technique for drinking nectar called ‘swing hovering.’ Only certain bats, hummingbirds, and the clearwing moths have the ability to swing from side to side while hovering over a flower to drink nectar.
The Hummingbird Clearwing Moth only visited for a few brief moments, but i was glad to have camera in hand when stepping out of the car. To attract these beauties to your garden plant native honeysuckle, viburnums, and Snowberry bushes for their caterpillar’s food plants and native Phlox ‘david,’ Monarda didyma, and butterfly bushes for the adults to nectar from.
