Hummingbird Clearwing Moth

The hummingbird clearwing moth is a member of the sphinx moth family (Sphingidae), a group renowned for fast, controlled flight and the ability to hover in place while feeding. Unlike most moths, it is active by day, which combined with its stout, fuzzy body and rapid wingbeats leads many observers to mistake it for a small hummingbird or a large bee at first glance.

Its most distinctive feature is the clear, scale-free patches on its wings, which develop after the moth's first flight sheds the fine scales that cover a typical newly emerged moth wing. This transparency, paired with an olive-green thorax and a reddish-brown to burgundy banded abdomen, makes it one of the more recognizable and photographed moths in North America.

As a pollinator, it plays an ecological role similar to bees and hummingbirds, visiting a wide range of tubular garden and wildflower blooms and helping move pollen between them while it feeds in place without landing.

• Stout, spindle-shaped body with an olive-green back and a burgundy-to-rust banded abdomen ending in a fan-like tail tuft.
• Wings are largely transparent (clear-scaled) with a dark reddish-brown border, giving the 'clearwing' name.
• Flies rapidly with an audible hum, hovering directly in front of flowers while unrolling a long, thin proboscis to feed.
• Lookalikes include the snowberry clearwing moth, which is smaller and shows more black-and-yellow banding resembling a bumblebee; the hummingbird clearwing has a more uniformly olive-and-wine coloration.

Found across most of eastern and central North America, from southern Canada down through the eastern United States, in open sunny habitats such as gardens, meadows, old fields, and forest edges where nectar flowers are abundant. Adults are most active on warm, sunny days from late spring through summer, often visiting the same flower patches repeatedly during daylight hours, particularly midday.

Adults feed exclusively on flower nectar, hovering in place with rapid wingbeats while probing blossoms with a long coiled proboscis, much like a hummingbird or large bee. This behavior makes it an effective pollinator of many native and garden plants, including bee balm, phlox, honeysuckle, and lilac. It has no chewing mouthparts as an adult and does not feed on foliage; larvae, by contrast, are leaf-feeding caterpillars that live on host plants such as honeysuckle, viburnum, and hawthorn.

Eggs are laid singly on the underside of host plant leaves and hatch into green caterpillars bearing a short curved posterior horn, typical of sphinx moth larvae. The caterpillar feeds and molts through several instars before dropping to the ground to pupate in a loose cocoon among leaf litter. There are one to two generations per year depending on region, with the species overwintering as a pupa in the soil or litter layer before emerging as an adult moth the following spring.