Hummingbird moths in the Sierra

[wildhiker]

On a hike on the PCT north from Donner Summit on Sunday (8/13), I was awed to come across a large area of pennyroyal mint in full bloom with numerous "hummingbird moths" hovering over the flowers to extract the nectar. I had never seen such a moth before. I compared my photo below (crop from an iphone photo) to images I found when searching online for "hummingbird moth", but couldn't determine which species it is. Anyone know? These moths were about 1.5 inches long with similar wingspan, although their wings moved so quickly to make them hover that it was hard to even see them. The camera caught a nice image of the wings. It was so fascinating to see this parallel evolution of moths that behave like hummingbirds!

-Phil

HummingbirdMothCloseup.jpg

[dapperdave]

White-lined Sphinx aka Hummingbird hawk moth aka Hyles lineata

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyles_lineata

Nature is wonderful

Dave

[moonburn]

I saw them for the first time a couple weeks ago in Desolation Wilderness and was enchanted... any time I was near red or pink flowers (mostly Scarlet Penstemon) they swooped in. Then saw them in Yosemite the following week, hard at work. Several of them stopped briefly to check out my salmon-colored shoes

[windknot]

I saw a bunch of these in the Darwin Bench/Evolution Basin area last week, too. When I was a kid, I used to collect tomato hornworms, the caterpillar stage of a related moth in the Sphingidae family. I kept them in jars for weeks, hoping to grow them into adult sphinx moths (more specifically, five-spotted hawk moths).

[SSSdave]

Excellent close-up capture. Well done!

Last week while below Thousand Island Lake, I did a near minute long 1080p video (yet to be reviewed) with my A6000 of a sphinx moths sucking nectar from most flowers on a well saturated mountain pride penstemon clump. Real gymnasts with such long long hollow proboscis, that provides the same function as a hummingbirds long tongue. They become quite wary if one of we monkeys gets close to where they are flying. In quiet forest if nearby, one can hear their rapidly beating wings.

[Gogd]

Never saw a hummingbird moth before; then just yesterday one visited the garden of my next door neighbor in Torrance, while we chatted. I happened to catch notice it lacked a tail; otherwise they look and fly very much like the bird.
Ed

[SirBC]

I just came out today from Pioneer Basin and they were everywhere. I thought they were humming birds at first until I noticed they had two antennae. As I was setting up my tent one of them flew into it and bounced off of the wall before flying out. After setting it up another one flew under the closed vestibule and was trapped until I was able to free it. They also seemed really interested in the blue bottle cap on my water bottle as about 1 every couple of minutes would fly over and stare at it for a second before flying off.

[erutan]

I've seen Sphinx Moth's on the west side of north glacier pass and a few other places, also usually near pink flowers.

Someone said they saw hundreds in granite park recently, and I saw two on the outskirts of Mammoth last night which was new. For whatever reason they're out this year (water or greenery).

[Harlen]

Really fine photograph of that moth Phil. Thanks for bringing them to our attention.

Lizzie and I quit counting this same moth on the way from North Lake to Humphreys Basin. We probably saw over 100! Yes, they did seem to favor pink flowers, especially the small Kalmia and Red Heather flowers, also the Red Penstemon. Fantastic!

[TahoeJeff]

This guy came in my garage a few days ago to escape Hurricane Hillary: