Sunday, August 13, 2023

Lined up

  

I'm guessing some of you have been seeing these moths recently, perhaps visiting flowers in your yard?  This is a White-lined Sphinx Moth (Hyles lineata).

I've received several reports and questions about them, and yesterday I noticed this one washed up in the wrack line on the beach.  (Sometimes that happens to insects  my guess is that they're dispersing but then end up too far out to sea and wash up with the drift.)

This moth was still alive here it is crawling on my hand:

 
You can see that this is a medium-sized moth  with a wingspan of ~3.5" (~9 cm) across.  That's smaller than the larger silk moths, but larger than many other moth species.  Because White-lined Sphinx Moths hover at flowers for nectar, they can be mistaken for hummingbirds from a distance.  [Anna's Hummingbirds have a wingspan of ~4.5" (~10 cm).]

Here's another quick photo for scale:
 
 

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for posting this! I've seen a couple in Bodega Bay around my butterfly bush this month and couldn't imagine a hummingbird so small. And this weekend we saw several on the bluffs near Whale Watch Point at Gualala Point Regional Park, and someone awesome hinted that they might be months. They were loving the thistle.

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