Hummingbird Moth at the Bee Balm and the Liatris.   OK - so, the Hummingbird moth is NOT a plant, but it is attracted to them, and is just sooooo cool to watch.  This guy was so not disturbed by me and Stephanie it was amazing!

   2015 was the first year that I saw this amazing creature.  At first sight, it appeared to be some very large stinging insect.....some mutant bee?  I gingerly approached it, keeping at a safe distance, lest it be the horrifying Africanized Bees that we've heard of.  My garden has been, even in its beauty and place of refuge,  the source of many painful interactions with nature - from poison ivy, to ticks, to ground bees.   Each year introduces me to new forms of natural pain!   My confusion was not unique - in fact Hummingbird Moths have evolved to mimic hummingbirds so effectively, as to confuse many would-be predators, who find hummingbirds to be neither a good meal, nor a desirable contender.

    I googled "Big Hovering Insect", and voila - there was my critter!  A posting on Facebook that evening received multiple replies from others, much more familiar with this insect.  How had I lived all of these years without EVER even hearing about the Hummingbird Moth? And what exactly is a "hummingbird moth"? 

   Moths and butterflies are categorized in the order Lepidoptera.    The genus Hemaris contains 17 species of hovering moths, four of which are commonly found in North America.  The family of moths that Hemaris  is found in, Sphingidae, contains about 1450 hawk-moth, sphinx-moths and hornworms.  

     The hovering flight pattern has only evolved in four animals:  hummingbirds, some bat species, hoverflies, and sphingids.  All of these animals are nectar feeders, and all arrived at the hovering strategy independently, in what we call convergent evolution.  Convergent evolution is defined as strategies that arise independently, with no indication of ancestral relationships.  And they may, or may not have arisen for the same reasons.

   The evolution of this hovering flight pattern has been much studied.  The difficulty of getting a steady video of them reveals well enough their ability to suddenly change direction in flight - suddenly jumping to the left, right, up or down, and clearly demonstrates the advantage over predators.  As my initial reaction to hemaris shows, it's not bad to resemble a big stinging insect, either.

   Research also shows that, absent competition, hovering, rather than perching on flowers, as bees do, has the potential for higher nectar yield. (Evolutionary Ecology  September 1997, Volume 11, Issue 5, pp 543-555). Bee-balm, beautiful as it is, doesn't provide much perching area, and in my observations of Hemaris feeding on my bee-balm, not having to find a good foot-hold definitely has its advantages, especially for a rather large, ungainly insect.   

  Soon, possibly by the end of January, or early February I will start exploring any Honeysuckle bushes around my property, to see if I can find any tiny, green eggs.    The caterpillar is a non-remarkable green animal, having one distinctive trait: its horn-like appendage on its head.  This protrusion is found on all of the  Horn-worms.  The caterpillar will emerge in early spring.  It will eat voraciously from its host plant and then drop into the leaf litter below, where it will create a pupa (chrysallis).  Here it will remain through the rest of the winter, emerging  in early summer - just in time for feasting on my Bee-balm.

    I was fortunate enough to have planted copious amounts of both Bee-balm and liatrus, both or which are favorites of hemaris, but will need to increase the Honeysuckle and other favorites for its egg-laying.