Hummingbird Hawkmoth
Hummingbird Hawkmoth (macroglossum stellatarum)
Spotted between showers yesterday in Cambridgeshire. Only the second
time I've seen one of these. They really are like humming birds.
This photo was taken on August 14, 2006.
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Comments and faves
koduckgirl, smellofrain, sierradelta74, Stooshie, and 172 other people added this photo to their favorites.
myriorama (71 months ago | reply)
wonderful shot!
Carl.J [deleted] (71 months ago | reply)
Still waiting for my first! Cracking shot.
koduckgirl (71 months ago | reply)
This has been tagged "BOKEHSONICE!-AUGUST BOKEHSONICE!-AUGUST14"...by either me or one of the other 12 administrators in Bokeh:Smooth and Silky because this is a VERY NICE bokeh image & it SHOULD be [& IS!] in the pool's
BOKEHsoNICE! slide show of administrator's picks for AUGUST
GOOD JOB!
and please check out August's growing slideshow
www.flickr.com/photos/tags/bokehsoniceaugust/ interesting/show/
& August14's Slideshow:
www.flickr.com/photos/tags/bokehsoniceaugust1 4/interestin...
koduckgirl (71 months ago | reply)
Hello this Fabulous example of bokeh in Bokeh: Smooth and Silky has been tagged with bokehphotooftheday you may now post it to Select: Bokeh -BokehPhotoOfTheDay tagged only
www.flickr.com/groups/52987582@N00/
it's archived here
www.flickr.com/groups/bokeh_/discuss/72157594 220809077/#c...
zebble (71 months ago | reply)
Awesome shot. You did so well to capture this in focus. Love the eye and the blur on the rear wing. Never even heard of these critters before.
janerc (71 months ago | reply)
As I learnt from Flickr recently, it's not really an eye, just the base of the antenna.
Skinnyde (71 months ago | reply)
Wonderful shot.
tawfique [deleted] (71 months ago | reply)
aaah...in cambridgeshire?? why dont i meet these guys? :(
wonderful shot!
janerc (71 months ago | reply)
Thanks everyone! @tawfique - we were just south of Cambridge, near Linton. It was only there for about 5 minutes.
Rich Johnson (70 months ago | reply)
That's a great photo! I saw one of these for the first time just the other day, just long enough to make incoherent pointing noises before it disappeared. I didn't have my camera, needless to say.
(British Lepidoptera)
vlad259 (70 months ago | reply)
Wow! That's awesome. Brilliant shot!
I've never seen one of those. Fascinating creature!
haikulinde (70 months ago | reply)
Absolutely fantastic!
Love it!
Please add this to www.flickr.com/groups/bigfave
--
Seen on your photo stream. (?)
nightmares_n_fairy_tales (70 months ago | reply)
Amazing!
janerc (70 months ago | reply)
Thank you everyone!
*roes* (70 months ago | reply)
Great, very well focused photo!
Seen in
MacSmiley (70 months ago | reply)
Thank you for showing something I never knew existed! It took me about 5 minutes of debating with myself, hummingbird or moth? Nawwhh, too big to be a moth.. looks like a hummingbird... no... wait a minute.. those look like antennae... and on and on... I finally decided it was a moth.
Looks even more extraordinary On Black
Awesome creature, spectacular capture. Thanks for sharing this.
SuperDave!! (70 months ago | reply)
.....Oooooohhh! .....Aaaaaaaahhh!
* * Follow the " top-v_aa " tag * *
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Double Exposure1 (70 months ago | reply)
That really is an interesting critter and quite a nice capture.
heavenuphere (70 months ago | reply)
that's incredible... I saw one of those in my garden today, and I had no idea what it was!
janerc (70 months ago | reply)
They're amazing aren't they?!
Firefiz Fotobox (70 months ago | reply)
excellent Shot - a Fave!
vidrio (70 months ago | reply)
sure it's not a hummingbird clearwing??
janerc (70 months ago | reply)
I'm in the UK. As far as I know the hummingbird hawkmoth is the only hummingbird-like moth we are likely to see here. And the wings weren't clear!
benoneill (70 months ago | reply)
Lovely photo! :)
Garth of Wight (70 months ago | reply)
I've seen these on the Isle of Wight and are amazing to watch. Great capture.
Super Duper Alice (70 months ago | reply)
very good
Mike McCallum (70 months ago | reply)
I saw one of these in 1992, in Sardinia, while I was a graduate student (I'm from the States). The other students standing around me thought I was nuts after I described it --- somehow noone else saw it for the full minute that I watched it zip around. "It was exactly like a hummingbird, but it was a bug!" The fact that I had recently stepped off the plane after coming from the states, and was in one of those last-year-of-graduate-school panic states didn't help.
(Hummingbird clearwings are indidgenous to N. America, so it shouldn't be that one.)
Wonderful photo, thanks a million!
ken mohnkern (70 months ago | reply)
I see something very much like this once in a while here in Pittsburgh. I always thought it looked like they had little furry lobster tails. ("Hummingbird Lobstermoth"?)
xenmate (70 months ago | reply)
I see these all the time in Spain. They come to the garden to fly around the honeysuckle. Awesome shot.
chrismear (70 months ago | reply)
Oh my god, that's a moth?! And they live here in Britain?! Oh my god. I'm scared enough of the little ones. I'm never going outside again.
nazcaplain (70 months ago | reply)
*Thank god* somebody got a clear shot of one of these critters! I was living in Japan and visited a marvelous open air museum in the Hakone national forest when I spotted a few of these guys working a flowering bush. Initially I was convinced they were hummingbirds: the sound of their wings beating the air, the way they intelligently flew and hovered, then stabbed into the flowers. But something wasn't quite right. One briefly landed and I thought I was hallucinating. My girlfriend told me it was a moth, but never having seen such a creature I was doubtful. She also warned against touching one, stating that some moths have a poisonous dusting over their bodies. Well, I still don't believe the poison bit, but I'm thrilled to see that others are as transfixed by these animalesque moths as I am. Thanks for the picture!
O-kim (70 months ago | reply)
Tons of these in and around Phoenix and in the desert. I usually see lots of them duing sunset and the evening twilight hitting lantanna and other native desert brush. They can fool you! They aren't as skittish as hummingbirds and will come close to you.
Nice shot!
city_birder (70 months ago | reply)
Beautiful photo. I've seen several hummingbird moths in New York State. I have a photo of a Hemaris thysbe on my blog here:
citybirder.blogspot.com/2004/09/week-in-catsk ills-driving...
heet_myser (70 months ago | reply)
Very cool. I managed to get one a while back, too.
VitaminG2 (70 months ago | reply)
I think I caught several pictures of one of these at a gas station in Ithaca, NY last summer, the pics begin here. What do you guys think? Same thing?
janerc (70 months ago | reply)
Not sure the colouring is right - there are other hummingbird moths including a clear-wing version which seems to frequent the Americas. Definitely similar though. (See the link from city birder a few posts up)
johnrynne (70 months ago | reply)
Lovely. I have lots of these in my garden (central Spain) but didn't know what they were called.
xiaolongnu (70 months ago | reply)
They are also known as Sphinx moths and come in more than a few varieties -- so the one posted by Vitamin G12 is probably related but not the same kind as the photo above. I have a picture of one taken on Isle au Haut, Maine, here. The petunias in the flowerbox attract hummingbirds *and* sphinx moths, and sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, because they move so fast; but this picture captures the markings on its back.
janerc (70 months ago | reply)
Can somebody please tell me how my picture has managed to get 7000 views, most of them today? As someone who is pleased if a photo gets 30 views, this amount of interest is rather out of my league!
xenmate (70 months ago | reply)
It appeared in boingboing.net
janerc (70 months ago | reply)
Thank you xenmate - the power of blogs!
xenmate (70 months ago | reply)
More like the power of *that* particular one. It's crazy how many people read it every day.
Tiara (70 months ago | reply)
Wow, this is freaky! Cool, but freaky.
ceejayoz (70 months ago | reply)
Appeared on FARK.com today, too.
forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=2 253448
groovehouse (70 months ago | reply)
I had no idea such a creature existed! Amazing and thanks for sharing!!
jackal9 (70 months ago | reply)
i have seen it before but never new what it was...so thanx for sharing
Dave Stolte (70 months ago | reply)
I've never seen such a freaky thing. I would probably run shrieking like a little girl if that thing dive-bombed me.
ocschwar (70 months ago | reply)
They're native to Mexico and often found in the Four Corners region in the States. I first saw one in Los Alamos, and my second response was to ask around if they were working on stranger things than the usual.
DeMeggers [deleted] (70 months ago | reply)
This is from the UK (Cambridegshire)? I had no idea that these magnificent creatures lived so far North. Excellent shot, especially when considering you probably didn't have much time to take it.
@zteco (70 months ago | reply)
WOW!
after 7 year I finally founded it!!!
it cames on my balcony house (I live in Turin, ITALY) every spring and only this year I had the opportunity to film it and take few pictures; each people who saw the shots, noticed that it seems like a mutation between an insect (night butterfly) and a colibrì. It makes a strange noise when it fly, like a buzz; and now it make me feel happy to know that really exist. :-)