Fabulous Coffee Bee Hawkmoth!

In my last post I introduced the Hummingbird Hawkmoth and today I will be posting about the Coffee Bee Hawkmoth Cephonodes hylas.

I had been intending to post about the Carpenter Bees but I haven't yet collected enough different shots of that wonderfully fat bee yet, soon though! Though one of it's names is the "Coffee Bee Hawkmoth", it is also known as the "Clearwing Hawkmoth" and "Pelucid Hawkmoth" but I prefer the first name.

Much larger than the Hummingbird Hawkmoth, it seems that the downdraft from the wings may toss the flower around a bit too much for comfortable feeding. To counter this the moth uses it first pair of legs to stabilize the blossom:

I noticed a peculiar feature when editing the photos: there appears to be a kind of grouve in the very front part of the head. Perhaps this allows the probosicus to arc up higher, and extend farther to reach distant blossoms or feed upon those that are particularly deep:

These moths lack jaws, so though that gap may look fearsome, it just can't bite anything.

I really liked the composition of this shot:

Check out the flared "tail", helping to control direction while the moth hovers from blossom to blossom!

Though the abdoment is brightly coloured, I lost sight of it several times while photographing it. The camouflage works!