This is one of a pair of humming bird clearwing moths that came a-hovering in our blue stars (amsonia) yesterday, seemingly without fear of leaving a trace. I took that as a challenge to find a shutter setting that could stop them in their high-speed, always-whirring flight. It turned out that 1/5000th of a second did the job nicely. Herre’s the other clearwing:
Hummingbird clearwings (Hemaris thysbe) are unusual moths. For one thing, they fly during the day, not in the dark. For another, they’re born with full-scaled wings, as are virtually all moths, but they lose a good number of those scales on their first flight, due to the high-speed beating of their wings.
Researchers have concluded that these moths have evolved furry bodies and see-through wings as mimicry to avoid the many insect-eating birds. The moths reportedly appear to birds as forms of hummingbirds in some perspectives and bumblebees in another.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on June 25, 2026.)