Bee Hawkmoth???

Saw this very strange hawkmoth yesterday. Unfortunately, it never stopped flying so the wings are blurred. With the clear wings, I suspect that it is a type of Bee Hawkmoth, but I have never seen anything like it before. There also appeared to be black and white appendages hanging down from the body of the moth which I thought at first were unexpanded wings. I looked at Vol. 3 of the moths of Borneo, but it did not appear to be there.

Sorry about the quality, but bee and hummingbird hawkmoths are very difficult to photograph clearly.

Hi Les,

something much more exciting. These photos are sufficiently clear to be identified to genus - Melittia.
Family: Sesiidae (clearwing moths).

Robinson, Tuck & Shaffer (1994: A Field Guide to the Smaller Moths of South-East Asia) have this to say:
"Melittia are large and robust bee-like sesiids with untidily tufted hind legs. The tufts are on the tibia and at least the first tarsomere; the mid and hind tarsomeres are strongly spined ventrally. The antenna is smooth, swollen and flattened, with a terminal tuft of setae......
"Adult M. bombiliformis can be attracted to putrefying crabs and have been successfully trapped using this bait in suspended Blendon butterfly traps in Thailand."

As Michael Palin once said (in the Life of Brian) whilst hanging upside down in a Roman jail "you lucky, lucky b!@#$%d"

cheers, Roger.

Thanks very much for the info. I had thought Hawkmoth owing to the shape of the abdomen, and the antennae were similar to the Narrow and Broad-bordered Bee Hawkmoths I remember from UK. The only clearwings I have come across before are the British ones, not Melittia sp. and they appear very different.

From your last comment,"( "you lucky, lucky b!@#$%d")":grin2: can I take it that it is quite an unusual find?

I tried to find someting out about the family by googling both Genus and species names but with very little success. I managed to find one pic of M. bombiliformis, and the wing tips look different to what I saw, though they are not clear in the photos. I believe I will have to wait for volume 2 of Moths of Borneo for that family to be shown.:cry:

Thanks again

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Painted Jezebel

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From your last comment,"( "you lucky, lucky b!@#$%d")":grin2: can I take it that it is quite an unusual find? ......

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most people rarely get to see, never mind photograph, sesiids in this part of the world. In Hong Kong, where there are over 50 people regularly photographing butterflies (and therefore have a chance of seeing these amazing mimics) only some 30 photos have been taken of 8 species in the last 4 years. I have only seen three sesiids in Hong Kong in 11 years (three different species, one at light, the other two by day), and a further two species in one evening's light trapping in Hainan - this in itself is also a most unusual occurrence as clearwings are hardly ever seen by night. When I did mothing in the UK, I can only recall seeing clearwings twice in 6 years.
Sesiids are common, though, as pheromone lures have shown. In the UK, the use of these lures has revolutionised the recording of clearwings. I heard from Alexander Schintlmeister (a Notodontid and Lymantriid specialist) when he was in Vietnam some years ago there was a Russian entomologist using pheromone lures for sesiids who recorded some 300 species in 6 months - the previous list for the country was about 30 species. I don't know how much a fisherman's tale this was, but the point is that these moths are out there, virtually unnoticed.

cheers, Roger.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hkmoths

most people rarely get to see, never mind photograph, sesiids in this part of the world.

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Thanks Roger. Horaay!:gbounce: :jumjoy: :redbounce

I'll keep an eye out for these, now I know what they look like and how they act.