It's a Bird, It's a Plane!

One of the many special joys of gardening is coming face to face with hummingbirds.  I love to watch them sip from flowers or just perch and survey their territory.  That's why Keith and I were thrilled to see a tiny hummingbird sampling the flowers at a flower box at a restaurant in Rudesheim, Germany. He was the tiniest thing we had ever seen.  He was brown and rust and white and hummed and hovered enchantingly.

I vaguely remembered that there was a hummingbird referred to as a bee hummingbird, so that evening I lhit the Internet. No, the bee hummingbird is from Cuba and is a striking blue color which this creature was not.  As I researched I found that there are no hummingbirds in Europe, only the New World. Interestingly about two years ago they did find hummingbird fossils near Frankfurt Germany.  I did find out there was a zoo near Rudesheim that had a hummingbird enclosure; perhaps one had escaped.

Then I found a question to a bird site where someone else had seen a small hummingbird in Germany.  The expert gently suggested that they had perhaps seen a European hummingbird hawk moth, Macroglossum stellatarum.  No Way!  I was a biology major. I'm a Master Gardener for crying out loud. I'm not going to mistake a moth for a bird.  Nevertheless I did Google the European hummingbird hawk moth and sure enough that was exactly what my husband and I saw. The moth flies during the day time, hovers and even has the hummm of the hummingbird. It's incredible. They say it's an example of convergent evolution that they have ended up so similar. Take a look at the pictures that my husband took and see if you would have been fooled too.

Macroglossum stellatarum. (photos by Keith Arrol)

Note the antennae, hummingbirds don't have these.

hummer moth

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