22
Wednesday, July 31, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
Tales from a
Sisters
Naturalist
by Jim Anderson
A hummingbird
wannabe
Well, Good People, hum-
mingbird moths are in sea-
son. Yes, they can fool you;
some people think they9re
actually hummingbirds,
while others don9t know
what they are, as evidenced
by an email I received the
other day with the question,
<What, pray tell, is this?=
But before we go into the
what, why, where and when
of hummingbird moths I
gotta share one of the events
that took place associated
with them years back&
All through my profes-
sional life I have had the
good fortune to work with
young people, introducing
them to various compo-
nents of the Natural World
around us. This really got
started during the years I
was staff naturalist for the
Oregon Museum of Science
and Industry (OMSI) in
Portland and when I started
the Sunriver Nature Center
4 or as Bob Royston, the
landscape architect called it,
The Ecologium.
I was standing in the
right place at the right time
when the young person was
not only ready and willing
to learn, but was seeking a
greater understanding of the
world of Nature.
Take the Janelle Orsillo
young lady who shot
the hummingbird moth
photo above. This came
about while I was out on a
North American Butterfly
Association count with
my wife, Sue, over in the
Ochocos. Janelle came up to
me and asked, <Jim, I would
like to learn to take photo-
graphs of insects, can you
help me?=
That sounded like a won-
derful idea to me, so I got
my camera rigged up with
the close-up lens and we
sat down in the shade of an
aspen tree and started on
the whys and wherefores of
insect photography. Janelle
is a very bright young lady
and caught on quickly. We
shot a couple of insects close
by and I thought she was
ready to go and away she
went.
As we neared the end of
the butterfly count route,
PHOTO BY JIM ANDERSON
Tomato hornworm.
near Big Summit Prairie,
I was about 50 yards from
Janelle and her group
of young people when I
heard one of them exclaim,
<Oh, look at the beautiful
hummingbird!=
We were in the wrong
place at the wrong time for
hummingbirds, so I knew
something was off-base. I
happened to have my binocs
around my neck so I focused
in on the group. I watched as
Janelle stooped over to see
what someone was calling
a hummingbird. Then, sud-
denly I caught an image of a
brilliant sparkle of wings.
I didn9t know what they
had going on, but it had to
be something I had never
seen in that spot before, so
I hot-footed it over to them.
The closer I got the more
that sparkling image began
to become something more
recognizable. Then, at about
10 feet from her I watched
Janelle raise the camera and
slowly move toward the
subject.
She got closer and closer
and by the time I arrived at
the scene I could see a brand-
new, freshly emerged clear-
wing hummingbird moth
hovering in a flower blos-
som. My first instinct was to
snatch the camera away from
her and shoot that magnifi-
cent moth myself. After all,
it was an insect I had never
seen before4 a <lifer= if you
will.
But better judgement took
over and I whispered, <Go
get it dear heart! Shoot it!=
And she did. Oh boy! Did
she ever! Every one of the
images she put on the mem-
ory card of that old Canon
was a winner. She9s a profes-
sional museum photographer
today. I9ll always be grateful
to her every time I look at
those images.
So, lets talk for a little
about hummingbird AKA
sphinx moths:
The one most noticeable
PHOTO BY JANELLE ORSILLO
Clear-wing hummingbird moth, aka hawk moth, aka sphinx moth.
right now is the lined hum-
mingbird moth, which
occurs from Canada to
Central America. They feed
on a number of plants, and
are one of the more colorful
pollinators of a wide variety
of wildflowers and domestic
plants. Like most humming-
bird moths, they don9t stay
in one place very long, but
zip between flowers pretty
rapidly.
The caterpillar is very
distinctive; it can be green
or black and has a very
obvious spike sticking up
from the rear of the animal
that looks pretty deadly.
But it9s not! It9s a device to
scare off predators, and I9ve
heard people exclaim about
how deadly it looks, so that
works to keep humans away,
as well.
The most obvious hum-
mingbird moth larva is
AKA the tomato hornworm.
It is very destructive to
tomato plants and not at all
enjoyable to find in one9s
greenhouse or back porch
tomatoes.
Be that as it may, our wild
sphinx moths are beautiful to
observe as they zip around in
our flower gardens, or just
plain old sagebrush and rab-
bitbrush backyard.
If you happen to come
upon my favorite, the clear-
wing hummingbird moth,
please send me a note and let
me know when and where:
Email jimnaturalist@gmail.
com. If you want to include
your photo, please, by all
means, do so.
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