#graceful clearwing moth

[ladyswillmart]

Here, I got BUGS for yas!

First up is a hummingbird clearwing moth, a diurnal species who never seems to stop moving. Sometimes we call these "flying lobsters" but they really do resemble hummingbirds! Apparently when they are fresh out of the cocoon, they actually have dark scales on their wings, but they beat their wings so fast and so much that all the scales fall off, giving them a clear appearance.

We have these in abundance, along with their relative, the snowberry clearwing, which is smaller and closer in appearance to a bumblebee. We also have (in much smaller numbers) the very similar appearing graceful clearwing, but you can differentiate these by the color of their legs (hummingbird clearwing has white legs, while the graceful has sort of brownish ones).

Also appearing here is a carpenter bee male; you can tell from the white spot on his head! And also the beneficial blue-winged wasp, which appears in large numbers in Virginia around this time. Indeed, I saw several of them congregating around this overgrown oregano plant.

[ainawgsd]

Hemaris gracilis, the slender clearwing or graceful clearwing, is a moth of the family Sphingidae. It is found in North America from Nova Scotia to central Florida along the East Coast and west through New England to Michigan to Saskatchewan. The species is listed as threatened in Connecticut.

The wingspan is 40–45 mm. It can be distinguished from similar species by a pair of red-brown bands on the sides of the thorax, which vary from green to yellow green dorsally and sometimes brown with white underneath. They have a red abdomen. The wings are transparent with reddish-brown borders. The outer edge of the forewing transparent area is even and the forewing cell has a median row of scales. There are probably two generations per year with adults on wing from March to August. They feed on the nectar of various flowers, including Pontederia cordata, Rubus species, Taraxacum officinale, Hieracium aurantiacum, and Phlox species.

The larvae have been recorded feeding on Vaccinium vacillans and Kalmia species. Pupation takes place in a thin walled cocoon under leaf litter.