PLATE XXIV1. Humming-Bird Hawk2. Bee Hawk3. Currant Clearwing4. Hornet Clearwing
PLATE XXIV
1. Humming-Bird Hawk2. Bee Hawk3. Currant Clearwing4. Hornet Clearwing
On a hot summer’s day you may often see this beautiful moth hovering in front of geraniums and other flowers in the garden, with its long trunk plunged deeply down into the blossoms in order to suck up their sweet juices. And if you stand a few feet away and listen carefully, you will hear a low humming noise, which is caused by the rapid movements of the wings. It looks and sounds, in fact, very much like a humming-bird, and people who have lived for many years in hot countries, and have then come to England, have often found it very difficult to believe that they were looking at a moth, and not at one of the beautiful little birds which they had known so well.
The caterpillar of the Humming-bird Hawk is greenish-brown, or bluish-green, sprinkled with tiny white dots, and with a pinkish-white stripe running along each side of its body. Below this is another stripe of dull yellow, and at the end of the body is a blue horn with a yellow tip. It feeds upon bedstraw, and when it has finished growing it buries itself just below the surface of the ground, and then turns into a reddish-brown chrysalis.
There are really two “bee hawks,” which you can recognise at once by their transparent wings. And as one of them has a narrow black border to its wings, while the other has a broad one, they are called the Narrow-bordered Bee Hawk, and the Broad-bordered Bee Hawk. And really they do look more like very big bumble-bees than moths. They fly by day, like the “humming-bird hawk,” and you may sometimes see them hovering in front of rhododendron blossoms on a bright sunny day in May, and darting away at the slightest alarm with almost the speed of light. But they are not very common, and in many parts of the country they are never seen at all.
The caterpillar of the “broad-bordered bee hawk” feeds upon honeysuckle, and that of the “narrow-bordered bee hawk” upon field scabious—that common low plant which looks so much like a rather small thistle. They are both green in colour, dotted with yellowish-white, and with a brown horn at the end of the body. When they have finished growing they spin little silken webs on the surface of the ground, and turn to chrysalids inside them.
The “clearwings” are very odd little moths with transparent wings, which have no scales upon them at all, except just on the narrow black borders. The consequence is that they do not look in the least like moths. They look much more like flies, or gnats, or wasps, or hornets. They nearly all come out in June and July, and you may see them resting on leaves in the hot sunshine.
Another curious thing about the “clearwings” is that their caterpillars feed, not upon the leaves of plants and trees, like almost all other caterpillars, but upon the pith of the stems or the twigs, or even upon the solid wood of the trunk or the branches; so it is very difficult indeed to find them. When they are fully fed they turn into chrysalids with rows of tiny hooks along their bodies, by means of which they can wriggle their way backwards and forwards along the burrows which they made when they were caterpillars.
The Currant Clearwing is so called because its caterpillar feeds on the pith in the young shoots of currant bushes. It is very common in almost every kitchen-garden, and sometimes does a good deal of mischief to the currants.
This is the largest of all the British “clearwings,” and it really does look so very much like a hornet that most people would be quite afraid to meddle with it for fear of being stung. But if ever you should happen to meet with the moth you can tell it from a real hornet quite easily; for if you look closely at it you will see that its body is not smooth and shiny, but is covered all over with close, soft down. The best place to look for it is on the trunks of poplar trees, quite close to the ground, in June and July; for after it comes out of the chrysalis it always sits on the tree-trunk for some little time in order to dry its wings. And you will nearly always find that it is sitting quite close to the burrow which it made when it was a caterpillar, and in which it lived for no less than two whole years.
There is another kind of “hornet clearwing,” whose caterpillar feeds in the stems of osiers instead of in the trunks of poplar trees. But it is not at all a common insect, and you are not very likely ever to find it.