Here are 2 shots of a Hummingbird Hawk Moth, (along with a definition gleaned from wikipedia) some of us spotted on a butterfly bush in the west garden. Apparently they’re somewhat unusual, so a real coup for the garden.
Robin
From wikipedia:
“The Hummingbird Hawk-moth is distributed throughout the northern Old World from Portugal to Japan, but is resident only in warmer climates (southern Europe, North Africa, and points east). It is strongly migratory and can be found virtually anywhere in the hemisphere in the summer. However it rarely survives the winter in northern latitudes (e.g. north of the Alps in Europe, north of the Caucasus in Russia).
Moths in the Hemaris genus of the family Sphingidae are known as “hummingbird moths” in the US, and “bee moths” in Europe, which sometimes causes confusion between this species and the North American genus.
Robin
