Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022 - 12
CREATURE FEATURE
A TONGUE TWICE AS LONG AS ITS BODY
Totally Tubular
It's a bird! It's a bug! What the heck is it?
By NANCY HENDERSON
L
ike most gardeners, Bob Matthews is sometimes
startled by the sudden sound of a big buzzing
" bee " with forked antennae and a fuzzy, fanned
tail. " I typically hear them before I even see
them, " says the retired University of Georgia
entomologist and author of several books on
insect behavior. " And then I look around in the
flowers and, by golly, there it is working the blossoms,
one after another. ... If they're working a flower and
you have the chance to watch them stick their tongue
in and out while they're hovering in front of it, you can
pretty well convince yourself it's not a real hummingbird.
But you're not sure what it is. "
This mystery critter is neither a bee nor a bird. A member
of the sphinx family-the winged insect featured in
the 1991 film " Silence of the Lambs " -the hummingbird
moth flies and flits just like its namesake, hovering while
sipping nectar and, thanks to its rapid wing movement,
humming. Half the size of the ruby-throated humming12
BLUERIDGECOUNTRY.COM
bird, the agile moth can fly frontwards and backwards
and dart as quickly as a real hummingbird.
" It would be very hard to get a video of one, " Matthews
says. " It would be a real challenge. "
North America boasts four species of hummingbird
moths, but the one most commonly found in the Blue
Ridge is the clearwing. As its name implies, its wings are
transparent, a characteristic that sets it apart from most
patterned moths. Another close relative: the tomato
hornworm, whose green caterpillars sometimes appear
on tomato plants in summer. All sphinx moths, incidentally,
are known to rear their front ends up and coil them
back, resembling the mythical Egyptian creature.
Not only are hummingbird moths totally harmless,
they're welcomed in gardens as major pollinators of tubular
blooms such as bee balm, phlox and salvia. (Unlike
hummingbirds, they're not particularly drawn to red
flowers.) The moth's long tongue, which it carries rolled
under its chin, stretches about twice the length of its
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022 - Cover1
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022 - Cover2
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022 - 3
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022 - 4
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022 - 5
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022 - 6
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022 - 12
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Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022 - Cover3
Blue Ridge Country July/August 2022 - Cover4
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