We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Program for. . . Bugs?!

That's right, I'm going to briefly mention and show some insects. Okay, only one type of insect, but it is a pretty cool species. Or at least I think so. My parents came over for a visit and recently left. I miss them already. On their last day here, we went up to see the Daniel Stowe Botanical Garden (DSBG) in Belmont, NC. It's pretty nice.

But what caught our eyes was not just the flowers or plants (cough, grin), but a species of hummingbird moth, the hummingbird clearwing. We tried capturing the moths on film, but you have to be fast as these moths flit from flower to flower so fast. See, I told you I was diverging from our regular content. I love these moths. The species we were looking at was diurnal (coming out during the day). The moths look like small hummingbirds but have antennae. We saw two different morphotypes out in the field, shown below. The photo on the left was taken by me, the one on the right by my dad. Other than cropping the initial photos, I left them in the slightly blurry condition. Like I said, they are hard to photograph as they hoover just like hummingbirds do.

I found the sighting of this insect fascinating as the plant I did my PhD work on was pollinated by nocturnal hawkmoths, similar to the moth we saw at DSBG. However, I never saw a single nocturnal moth during my thesis work. I even used infrared videotape and still never saw the moth. I did however see a diurnal species of hawkmoth. So, it was great that my parents got to see some of the types of organisms I worked with during graduate school, or tried to work with anyways.

Happy fibering and insect watching!