Hummingbird hawkmoth: a bit of video

You may have seen the cool posting in BoingBoing some weeks ago about the hummingbird hawkmoth. If you did, this short YouTube video from our garden (it's an .MPG file) might amuse you. (There's also a version of the video here at Photobucket: I think their transfer went a little better.) Anyway, before we went away to CopperCon, Peter caught a few seconds of one of the local hawkmoths "tanking up" while the white buddleia bush in the front rockery was in bloom.

The species is Macroglossum stellatarum. Apparently (according to the Reader's Digest Field Guide to the Butterflies and Other Insects of Britain) hawkmoths of this species migrate to the UK and Ireland from France each year. (Some may also overwinter in the southern counties of each island). They were fairly rare in the UK when the book was written in 1984 -- it states that normally about fifty per year would be spotted: though there were very occasional years (as in 1947) when thousands might be seen. 

When Peter took this video in our garden, there were easily ten of them hanging around and working the buddleia -- which is a favorite with all the butterflies because it's so fragrant and produces so much nectar in the long flower-spikes. I find myself wondering whether the  lengthening of our local summers over the last couple of decades -- and their earlier onset -- is making it easier for increased numbers of the hawkmoths to get here from France: or whether maybe we now have a breeding population of our own in Ireland....

(Amusing sidelight: note the tiny spark of "blue-eye" that the flash from Peter's camera inflicted on the moth.)

(Edit: Direct link to MPG file removed due to something like $300 worth of bandwidth overage charges to our server since yesterday...)

Is this minimalist enough?

hanukit01
Originally uploaded by designsponge.


...Though I imagine you'd have to say the blessing real fast on the eighth night...