Sunday, May 04, 2008

Hummingbird Moth



A close-up of a Hummingbird Clearwing Moth reveals the long proboscis curled up into a convenient travel position.

Today as I followed some yellow and black swallowtail butterflies around our lilac bush I encountered this interesting little moth. It showed a clear preference for the shaded areas which made it difficult to obtain correct exposure while using a shutter speed fast enough to capture the image. Finally I settled on ISO 800 and captured this image at 1/640th of a second with an aperture of F5.6 and a 400mm focal length.

11 comments:

Shionge said...

First time I see this Salty and very very interesting indeed :D

photowannabe said...

Your nature shots areso interesting. I love how you captured the proboscis of the moth. Lots of patience to get the great results.

Anonymous said...

interesting moth! very nice shot!

Tom said...

When I see shots such as this I feel humble... the marvals of nature at times take your breath away... well captured Salty..

This Is My Blog - fishing guy said...

Salty: I've seen these guys around but never had a name. They certainly do hover like a hummingbird. What a great picture.

imac said...

Wonderful shot Salty.

My bridge and odd shot are now showing.

DeeMom said...

Wonderful, we have those here but I have NEVER been able to get a picture of them.
Are they not neat?

Super shot...

lv2scpbk said...

I don't think I've ever seen one of these. Interesting post.

Chad Oneil Myers said...

Truly Bizarre!

Lori Schmidt (LoriProPhoto) said...

I photographed one of these last summer too, I did quite a bit of research on them and apparantly you will see them early morning before the heat and it appears that they are attracted to things that have a pink or purple color, Mine was working on a flowering teasel which has light purple petals. You can see it on my other blog http:loriscritters.blogspot.com
Just page down a bit. I have only seen them twice once I was fortunate enough to have my camera and a macro lens because this little guy is fast and small, less than an inch long (like his namesake in the feathered family).

We have a beautiful lilac bush flowering at the moment I am going to start observing it more intently earlier in the mornings LOL. Also got a hummingbird feeder but need to put it up still.

Lori Schmidt (LoriProPhoto) said...

Sori the link to my second blog is http://loriscritters.blogspot.com

My typing is going down the tubes.