Dusk was slowly chasing the daylight hours away now, but it was still light enough to see the flower beds -- especially the tall buddleias. While glancing in that direction from the patio, I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw what I believed was a baby hummingbird whirring its little wings and sipping nectar from the buddleia blossoms. It was flitting from blossom to blossom, hungrily sipping nectar with what I THOUGHT was its beak. I quickly called my husband to come and see our baby hummer, and to be careful not to frighten it away.
Together, we slowly moved closer and closer to the buddleia blossom, wishing we had our camera in hand. Suddenly, I noticed something very odd. THIS hummer didn't have a long, needle-like beak at all -- at least not like all the other hummingbirds we've seen! In fact -- this wasn't even a HUMMINGBIRD!
After peering at this beautiful, albeit odd looking "insect" for some time, we ruled out the possibility of it being a HUGE bumblebee. Finally, after an almost nose-to-nose inspection, I saw that this little visitor had two long antennae AND a very long proboscis that it used for drinking nectar!
Although it was almost fully dark outside by now -- the light slowly began to dawn (in my head). We had just been blessed with the visit of our very first SPHINX MOTH! Since that pleasant evening in late July, we have witnessed from one to four sphinx moths feeding at our buddleia blossoms almost every evening -- and always just at dusk.
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