Returning home yesterday afternoon, I found a large, attractive moth on the wall of our front porch. It was a white-lined sphinx moth, a member of the sphinx moth family, which includes hawk moths and hummingbird moths; the latter name derives from their large size, rapid flight and feeding behavior, which involves hovering over tubular flowers to extract nectar. Indeed, sphinx moths, like hummingbirds and certain bats, are important pollinators in most desert regions.
Their large, colorful caterpillars may be encountered in roaming armies, traversing roads or trails; each species has its favored plant food which, unfortunately, includes tomatoes and apple trees. Before pupating, the caterpillar usually enters an underground chamber or settles within the crevices of rock walls or wood piles; most species overwinter in the pupal form.
The attractive adults generally feed at dawn or dusk though some species are active during the day and others are strictly nocturnal. Often mistaken for hummingbirds, as mentioned above, they live for three to four weeks, feasting on nectar, entertaining humans and producing their next generation.
