Make no mistake with this sound of hummer
THIS made me smile from reader Bob Wood of Stockport last week as Premiership Football hit the screens.
“With half the males in England pre-occupied with a football match last week, me included, I was just about to sit down with a bottle of red and enjoy the game, only to be disturbed by my little girl shouting, Dad, there’s a big thing in my gazebo!
“With the cork half-out, and kick-off imminent, I rushed outside to remove the offending creature, however, when I discovered that the ‘big thing’, was a very special ‘big thing’, all thoughts ‘football’ went out of the window.”
Turns out Bob’s daughter had found a hummingbird hawk moth, the cause of one of the most remarkable cases of mistaken identity in the British Isles.
Every year many people are taken back as they see in their garden what appears to be a hummingbird hovering at the flowers.
A careful check on the size and a closer look unmasks this imposter as a hummingbird hawk moth, Macroglossum stellatarum.
The hummingbird hawk moth is a day-flying moth with a wingspan of about two inches (50-58mm).
It has a brown, white-spotted abdomen, brown forewings and orange hind-wings.
It is very swift on the wing and an expert hoverer.
The wings beat so rapidly that they produce an audible hum and can be seen only as a haze.
The darting movement from one flower to the next with the long proboscis uncoiled completes the illusion of a hummingbird and also makes the moth very difficult to photograph.
The shot seen here was my best effort of the moth, whereas I have plenty of the flower itself, as by the time the shutter clicked the moth had moved on.
The hummingbird hawk moth prefers to fly in bright sunlight, but it will also take to wing in dull weather, at dusk or dawn, and sometimes even at night.
It is very strongly attracted to flowers that provide a plentiful supply of nectar, such as red valerian, honeysuckle, jasmine, buddleia, lilac, escallonia, petunia and phlox.
It hovers in front of a flower, probes it repeatedly for nectar and then darts to the next flower.
It has a remarkably good memory individuals return to the same flowerbeds every day at about the same time.
In the British Isles they can be seen somewhere every year and have been recorded in every county as far north as the Orkney and Shetland Islands.
The numbers that reach our shores can vary greatly between years.
The main season runs from June to September, with smaller numbers recorded throughout the rest of the year.
The Hummingbird hawk moth breeds regularly in the UK and larvae have been found in most years in July and August.
The favourite food plant is Galium (bedstraw) and
Rubia (wild madder).
The larva grows up to 60mm in length. It is very colourful with green or reddish brown body with white dots and dark, white and yellow stripes, black spiracles and a blue yellow-tipped horn.
The late summer peak in numbers is largely the result of emergence of locally raised moths.
Even though the moths successfully breed in the UK, they are not able to survive the winter (in mild winters, small numbers may overwinter).
Therefore, the continuing presence of this remarkable moth is dependent on the annual influx from southern France.
Late summer always brings a wave of calls and e-mails to the RSPB – and me – detailing sightings of hummingbirds in UK gardens.
But can they really be here when they belong in the Americas?
No is the answer, because their native range covers most of the
Americas and they could never cross the Atlantic.
Hummingbirds are very difficult to keep in captivity and so only a small number of zoos in the UK keep them.