The Carolina Sphinx Moth, Manduca sexta
 

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7420/...c253ef06_b.jpgManduca sexta by tindomul1of9, on Flickr

This one is quite a surprise find for a bitterly cold February night. As it turns out this one came from a culture of tomato horn worms that I purchased so my chubby frogs could eat them. This female survived, metamorphosed and surprised me last night trying to get out of the frog enclosure.
The funny thing is that I has spent the day looking through pics of moths on the internet wishing for spring to hurry up and arrive so I could go mothing.

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7321/...4c6ab83a_b.jpgManduca sexta by tindomul1of9, on Flickr

Beautiful! We often get moths during the wrong season because they come in on my plants, then start another generation....

Those guys LOVE brugmansia and datura, which are poisonous tomato relatives with enormous and incredibly fragrant blooms. In the evenings of summer months, these guys swarm the giant blooms en masse, looking more like hummingbirds than moths.

Awesome! Sphingid moths are one of my favorite animal groups. I love seeing hornworms on my tomatoes, if one is doing too much damage to a smaller plant I usually move it to a bigger one that won't mind losing a few branches. The parasitic wasps end up getting most of them anyway, probably for the best but sad all the same. :( Thanks for the great photos, a nice reminder of the spring and summer to come. :)

Time for me to watch Silence of the Lambs again!

I've all ways known them as hummingbird moths, they love my garden phlox in the spring. Thanks for sharing you moth.

Nice now please ID those moths they really cool but no body knew their names one dalmatian http://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/15...ead98677e8.jpghttp://tapatalk.imageshack.com/v2/15...c9e4ba3d7c.jpg:cool: