Up close and personal with a hummingbird clearwing moth . . .

Finally had a visit last week from one of my favorite little flying machines, a Hummingbird Clearwing sphinx moth. These 1 1/2 inch long pollinators can beat their wings up to 70 beats per second versus a Hummingbird of around 50 beats per second . . .

A Snowberry Clearwing moth enjoying itself at the Milkweed buffet in early July. This sphinx moth is often mistaken for a bumblebee because of its color pattern . . .

With the summer colors gone and most of the autumn colors, been looking back to late summer images and found a clearwing hummingbird moth in flight that makes me smile. Didn't have many visit this year, and this was the only one I was able to capture in flight. Love these little flying beasts.

This Hummingbird Clearwing moth takes its turn at hovering and poking around the flowers. These moths are excellent pollinators, and need a good amount of energy to keep their wings beating . . .

A Nessus Sphinx Moth with wings in constant motion uses its prominent proboscis to get a little nectar from a Dame's Rocket flower. Their wings are covered in scales (like all Lepidoptera) and over time they lose many of these scales from patches on their wings; so they are called clearwing hummingbird moths. As this was taken in May, my guess is that not many scales had fallen off so the wings are not yet clearwing.