WOODLAND SUPERHEROES STUDIOS
“I really thought it was a tiny bird.”
– Rowan
I was out in the garden with Dad when something moving over by the purple flowers caught my eye.
It was really small and it was hovering above the flowers.
I went to take a closer look.
When I got nearer, it wasn’t landing on the flowers like the bumblebees did.
It just stayed in the air.
Then suddenly, it shot sideways really fast, stopped again and hovered in front of another flower.
I could hear its wings making this tiny humming sound.
I thought it was a bird.
A really tiny bird.
I turned around and shouted,
“Dad, come and look! Quick!”
Dad came over and watched it.
Then he said,
“That isn’t a bird. It’s a moth.”
A moth?
I really thought he was joking.
But when I looked properly, I could see its antennae.
And then I noticed this really long tongue going right inside the flowers while it was still hovering.
Dad told me it was called a hummingbird hawk-moth.
He also told me that its long tongue has a proper name.
A proboscis.
As we were going back inside, I stopped and looked at all the other flowers in the garden. I wondered how many other things I’d walked past and never even noticed.
I drew it afterwards because I didn’t want to forget what it looked like.
I kept thinking about the way it moved.
Mine ended up looking a bit like a tiny alien spaceship.
It was nothing like the moths I was used to seeing.
It was out in the daytime and it hardly seemed to stop moving.
The strangest bit was how it could just stay there in the air in front of a flower.
I still can’t believe I thought it was a bird.
But even looking at my drawing now, I still think it looks a little bit like one.
The bit I couldn’t stop thinking about was its tongue.
It looked ridiculously long.
Its proper name is proboscis (pronounced pruh-BOSS-is).
When the moth isn’t using it, the proboscis stays curled up. Then, when it reaches a flower, it unrolls and goes down inside to drink the nectar.
That means the moth can hover in front of a flower while it feeds instead of having to land on it.
I kept thinking about how I nearly missed all of that because, at first, I was too busy thinking it was a tiny bird.
Hummingbird-Moth
There’s always something else to notice.
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