Dragoness Eclectic's Journal

While on vacation at my in-laws place in Tennessee this month, I watched lots of ruby-throated humming birds come to the feeder and flowers on her back porch. The males would chase each other and all the females away from the feeder; it was a wonder they got any chance to feed themselves because they seemed to spend all their time chasing. The females would swoop in and feed while the males were off chasing someone; it was entertaining to watch.


Male Ruby-Throated Hummingbird


Female Ruby-Throated Hummingbird


Female Ruby-Throat snatching a quick drink


Female Ruby-Throat in flight near feeder


I had a real hard time getting a picture of a male ruby-throat in flight, they were so fast. Even when I got them in the frame, the picture was blurred, as you can see here.

Male Ruby-Throat in flight


Then there was the Not A Hummingbird. When we first saw it, we thought it was a bumblebee, but the colors and outline was all wrong. After watching it flit from flower to flower, I realized it was a bug mimicking a hummingbird.

Mysterious "Hummingbug"




We still had no idea what it was, so I went outside and got some close-ups of it. It wasn't nearly as skittish as the hummingbirds; it let me walk right up to it and take pictures. The antenna and general body shape suggested moth...

Mysterious Hummingbird-mimic moth


Aft-end view of mystery moth


Note the clubbed antenna; definitely a moth, not a butterfly. Also note the tail bristles, spread to look like a hummingbird's forked tail. The thing that threw us off was that it had clear wings, like a dragonfly or wasp; none of us thought there were any clear-winged moths. As it turned out, we were wrong.

Side view


Note the moth proboscis probing for nectar, and the segmented abdomen.

Using these pictures, I searched for "hummingbird-mimic moth" on the internet, and found our culprit. It's the Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth (Hemaris diffinis), a member of the sphinx moth family.

Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird Moth