Seriously, this moth thing has to stop - it's getting pretty bizarre. Is this just the right time of year for moths or something!?
Today I spotted one of these gorgeous creatures sipping nectar from the purple hydrangea in my back garden. (For other photos, see here, and here.) This beautiful little moth looks exactly like a ruby-throated hummingbird, right down to the green fur on its back, white belly and fluffy little tuft that looks like a bird's tail! I definitely wouldn't have recognized it as a moth if I wouldn't have encountered that trapped hummingbird in my sunroom a few weeks ago. I got such a great closeup on a real ruby-throat that this moth was pretty much unmistakable today.
Tomorrow I'm going to try and capture it for a few photos. It showed up several times today to drink nectar, so I'm pretty certain it will be back tomorrow as well!
I watched a hummingbird moth exactly like this one this afternoon, feeding, along with many bees (hooray), on what my Minnesota Wildflower Guide tells me is wild bergamot, a variety of monarda. The latter is part of a "native prairie planting" project on the banks of the Wolfe Park lake in St. Louis Park, MN, a suburb of Minneapolis. I'd say the project is a great success from the number of pollinators and butterflies, including Monarchs, I've seen there this summer.
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