August 27, 2009

Clear Winged Hummingbird Moth

So yesterday my eldest daughter spotted a really interesting *thing* (LOL!) flying around our flowers in the front of our house. At first I had nooo clue what it was....was it one of those huge bees?? A large wasp??? Wait..wait...is it a hummingbird?!?! I was soo excited that it could possibly be a hummingbird, as my MIL loooooves hummingbirds and of course, so does my husband. I knew I wouldn't be able to get close enough with my little Canon Power Shot, so I grabbed hubby's big ole Canon DSLR. Ran outside and started clicking away. I stayed far enough away until I could figure out if it would either sting me (haha!) or be scared of me and fly away. I just kept clicking away and creeping closer and closer. Than, woops, I ended up by taking so many pictures I filled up the rest of hubby's memory card! ROFL!! So I ran back inside to grab my smaller Pentax DSLR and started shooting away again. I ended up by being able to get about 2 feet away from this flying thing. *grin* I still couldn't figure out what it was. Once I downloaded the pictures, one of my best friends thankfully started on the research trail and we discovered that it was a Clear Winged Hummingbird Moth and NOT a hummingbird. Still....VERY cool. So, here are a few pictures of this wild looking insect! *grin* (Please bear in mind that I had nooo clue what I was doing with the DSLR cameras, LOLOL!!! I was just pointing and shooting. This is a great incentive to me to learn how to actually USE my DSLR!! *grin*)



2 comments:

Jill said...

We had one of those around our azaleas last year. My husband and I debated for a good hour whether it was a bird or a bug. I was voting for bird, but he saw the antennae and said bug.

Well, it finally occurred to me to google "hummingbird bug" online and found out he was right ;(

We've been looking hard this year, but haven't seen it again.

Jennifer Casady said...

Isn't it a crazy looking bug?! I hope we get to see it again one of these days. We really enjoyed watching it.