Comment by rob74
6 hours ago
One of those moths is this guy, who (in flight, not so much in still images) looks and sounds like a miniature hummingbird: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummingbird_hawk-moth
6 hours ago
One of those moths is this guy, who (in flight, not so much in still images) looks and sounds like a miniature hummingbird: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hummingbird_hawk-moth
I noticed these for the first time earlier this summer. Incredible insects! They really do give a hummingbird impression.
For many people, it is the other way around. It is very remarkable that there is a bird, which looks so much like a big version of this butterfly!
After all, in Europe these butterflies are commonplace, but I've never seen the American bird in my life.
rare instance where the German name Taubenschwänzchen ('little dove-tail') is nicer than the English name
That reminds me that people who hear the word for butterfly (Schmetterling) in German for the first time usually think it sounds extremely violent. Ok, then again, "butterfly" sounds slightly disgusting if you think about it. But TIL that they actually have a similar root: the "Schmetter-" doesn't come from smashing, but from "Schmetten", a word derived from the Slavic "smetana" (cream). Apparently butterflies got their name from the popular belief that witches could turn into butterflies to steal milk or cream (and probably also other dairy products?).
Finding hawk moth caterpillars on my tomato plant was one of the bigger wtfs of my adult life
Honestly you're lucky there were any leaves left.
You must have caught it within two or three hours after its arrival.
In the US we have similar hawk moths; the tomato hornworm also looks like a hummingbird when it reaches maturity.
The "hornworm" caterpillars leave amazing poops behind. They look like (not so) little green grenades.
Their moths are important pollinators of some nice native flowers.
Once I started leaving just the ones with parasitoid wasp eggs on their backs in the garden, I completely stopped having problems with these guys.
Very common around my mom's house.