The stiff goldenrod began blooming this week, and that’s attracting many bumblebees and honeybees and at least three locust borers, which are yellow-and-black longhorned beetles. And then I spotted this:

It looked like a tiny hummingbird moth with its transparent wings and tail shaped like a lobster’s. In fact, when I searched for “clear wings lobster tail,” all the results were about hummingbird moths – but this is just a fraction of the size, and it doesn’t flit like a hummingbird but instead it acts like a bee or fly. It swishes its “tail” up and down like a mermaid.

Instagram to the rescue. Just 20 minutes after I posted a photo and asked for help identifying the insect, one of my buddies identified it as a clearwing borer moth, and I think I’ve further identified it as a dogwood borer.

The University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban Ecology and Sustainability calls clearwing borers “native pests” that sometimes kill trees and sometimes don’t cause serious damage.

This is the third borer I’ve seen in the last two years. The others:

• Locust borer beetle (last image)
• Squash vine borer moth (sixth image)

Perhaps the most famous borer these days is the destructive, invasive emerald ash borer beetle – fortunately, I haven’t seen one of these yet. And there are others that aren’t quite as destructive, though they do cause damage.

More about clearwing borer moths

• The lesser ash threat? Banded ash clearwing borer – with signs that these moths have infected trees
• Fact sheet (warning: PDF) from the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban Ecology and Sustainability

 

Giant bumblebee? Small hummingbird? Flying shrimp?

Twice in the last week I saw a hummingbird moth in our garden. The first time I had only my phone to document it. It appears to be a hummingbird clearwing, Hemaris thysbe, and sort of looks like a flying shrimp or lobster.

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to see one again when I had a “real” camera. This time it was a different moth – snowberry clearwing, or Hemaris diffinis – which looks more like a giant bumblebee.

I reeled off more than a hundred shots, hoping that at least a few would be clear.

A hummingbird moth looks like a hummingbird with its small size, darting behavior, and wings that move so fast they can barely be seen, but it is about half the size of a hummingbird and has antennae and a curling proboscis, which the birds do not.

Look how long the proboscis is when unfurled – all the way down into the flower:

The reason for the “clearwing” descriptor is obvious in this photo (at least, one of the clear wings is visible):

There are four species of hummingbird moths in North America, and in one week, I saw two of them in my own garden! Both times I saw this moth, it was evening, after the sun had gone behind the trees, and both times it was on our big cluster of bee balm.

I also tried video both nights, with amateurish results because I could never accurately anticipate where they were going to go next – though a faint humming noise can be heard. This is the hummingbird clearwing:

And this is the snowberry clearwing:

Both nights the moths let me watch them flutter around for more than 10 minutes – and then, suddenly, each was gone.

More about hummingbird moths

• Hummingbird moth (U.S. Forest Service)
• Sphingidae family of moths (Wikipedia)
• All my butterfly moth photos