Скачать или смотреть The Humming Bird Hawk Moth

The hummingbird hawk-moth is distributed throughout the northern Old World from Portugal to Japan, but it breeds mainly in warmer climates like southern Europe and North Africa.

It is a strong flier, dispersing widely in the summer. However it rarely survives the winter in northern latitudes

Hummingbird hawk-moths can be easily seen in gardens, parks, meadows, bushes, and woodland edge, where the preferred food plants grow like honeysuckle and many others).
Their larvae usually feed on bedstraws.

Adults are particularly fond of nectar-rich flowers .

since they can then take advantage of their long proboscis and avoid competition from other insects. Flowers with longer tubes typically present the feeding animal a higher nectar reward. Proboscis length is thought to have been evolutionarily impacted by the length of flower feeding tubes.

The forewings are brown, with black wavy lines across them, while the hindwings are orange with a black edge. The abdomen is quite broad, with a fan-tail at the end. The wingspan is 40–45 millimetres.

In the southern parts of its range, the hummingbird hawk-moth is highly active even when temperatures are high, and temperatures above 45 °C have been recorded. This is among the highest recorded for hawk-moths, and near the limit for insect muscle activity.


Newly hatched larvae are clear yellow, and in the second instar assume their green coloration. The larva is green with two grey stripes bordered in cream along the sides and with a horn at the rear end. The horn is purplish red, changing to blue with an orange tip in the last instar. They feed fully exposed on the top of the host plant.

Although dependent on warmth and sun, the larval stage can be as rapid as 20 days.