This was hovering around our impatiens last summer, and no one knows what it is. It’s about 2 to 2 1/2 inches long with translucent wings. Can anyone help? Thanks.
It looks like a variant of the clearwing sphinx moth. There are over 100 species of sphingidae moths pictured in thumbnails at this Moths of north America site.
It’s a huge freakin’ moth. I’ve seen a few around here, and found out somehow…don’t remember where. I thought it was a hummingbird at first, but no. I wanna say it’s the largest moth spieces found in N.A., if not the world.
Yup, that’s what it is. I predicted it was going to turn out to be a hawk moth in the other thread.
Nah, the Cecropia moth is a lot bigger.
So is the Black Witch Moth.
I saw one of those a few years ago, and will always remember it because it looked and acted just like a hummingbird. I went to a bookstore and looked it up, and decided it was a Nessus Sphinx. But now that I’ve read the above and googled a bit, I think it’s this:
Hummingbird Clearwing Moth (Hemaris thysbe)
The second picture down clearly shows the red spot on its tail.
I was lucky enough to have a Hummingbird Hawkmoth visit the Salvia in my garden last year (I live in the UK and they are not common here) - the similarity in movement to a genuine hummingbird (which I have only ever seen on TV) is really striking.