A Sphinx, Methinx

For the past week or so, I’ve caught fleeting glimpses of it. Always on the move and quickly so, the hardworking white-lined sphinx moth is in its seasonal moment, and this one seems to find the flowers around our yard to be a good source of nectar. During the day the sphinx moth wastes little time and rarely stops, so unless you either happen to have teh skills or a fancy high-speed camera pointed at it (or both!)  in those few moments it hovers hummingbird-like over a bloom from which it’s about to sip, there ain’t much than a fuzzy blur you’re going to record.

So instead, if you’re like me, you keep your eyes pealed around the night light sources, where they usually hang out in between feeding sessions.

Last night I looked up in one of the backyard lanterns and saw the large silhouette and nearly shouted eureka! before jogging past Susan in the kitchen through the house to the camera on my desk and back out again.

Of course, grabbing a snap through a small cobwebby lantern hole of a moth on the inside of the swaying paper thing suspended about eight feet off the deck required some cantilevering  and thus there’s no artistry or framing or good angle in the following picture, but I got the beautiful sunofagun (click to enlarge):

And yeah, that’s its right eye glowering at me.