One night this past week I was sitting in the hot shade of the deck watching for hummingbird activity. Every so often one or two would either come to the flowers and feeders or chase each other around. Most of them were young females, but every once in a while an adult male made an appearance.
As July comes to an end and August begins there will be more hummingbirds around because they’re already migrating. New individuals may show up one day but leave the next, only to be replaced by other migrants. Some may stay around for days, but others only stop in on their way further south.
And by Sept. 1 most of the adult males are gone from this area. That evening there was actually more activity from sphinx, or hawk, moths than there was from hummingbirds.
They fly in the daytime and they’re so small that people mistake them for tiny hummingbirds, which they aren’t. There are three different sphinx moths commonly seen around here. The hummingbird clearwing sphinx looks like a large tan and dark bee.
The snowberry clearwing looks about the same but it has a pale upper back and a dark rump band. And the white-lines sphinx is easily identified by the black and white and salmon colors of its wings and tail. There was also activity, albeit slow and measured, on some of the herbs growing near the deck.
Three black swallowtail caterpillars were feeding on the parsley, bronze fennel, and dill plants there. People often kill any caterpillar they see, but without caterpillars there wou.