Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Interesting Finds

Photo by Rick Scott http://members.cox.net/rmscott/misc/hummingbird_moth.html I was shooting some macros the other day, right around dusk, while waiting for someone to move out so I could find a geocache, when this little guy came buzzing up near me. I was in a little garden and I am sure the petunias nearby were quite the draw this late in the fall.

I had no idea what he was, but he didn't frighten like a regular hummingbird and there seemed to be too many feet for it to not be a bug. I was checking out my terrible pictures of it and was able to do a search and find that there is a hummingbird moth and that is what I was seeing. This is not my photo but I put the credit and link in the alt text if you want to see more of Rick Scott's work.

I found a cool site that has all the stages as well as the catapiller (which looks a lot like the tomato hornworm) that you might want to check out if you have time. It is called birds-n-garden.com and this link will take you directly to the Hummingbird Moth section but I am sure the rest of the site is awesome as well.

Oh, and in my quest to identify this guy, I found this other site called What's That Bug that has some great info and photos that people turn in. That is the initial place I landed and identified this moth from.

4 comments:

Haha said...

I showed this pic to my collegue Matt just now and he says we have them here in Oregon. I will now be on the lookout for my first sighting....Way cool!

Anonymous said...

That's a great photograph.

... said...

Yeah, wish I had taken it...haha. I think mine would have turned out better if it wasn't getting dark when I saw the hummingbird moth...that always messes up the focus on my camera.

Chicken said...

I want to see one!!!