Eden Mill Park, Pylesville, MD - July 20, 2005

A peek into my thought process:
"What is that thing, is that a hummingbird?  It's hovering a feeding at flowers and is about the right size... oh wait, it's got six legs and no beak. Is it a bee? A terrifyingly large bee? No, it's got no stinger and a proboscis. Butterfly? Moth?  What the...?  Stop moving!  I want to take your picture!  You... no!  Why won't you land on something like any good, self-respecting insect?  Most of them are black, but this one's bigger and red. I wonder why?  Did I get... no, that's just its tail.  Looks like a fuzzy lobster tail.  Is it a flying crustacean?  I don't think they have those.  Oh, I think I got... no, it ducked behind the flower at the last minute.  And what kind of flowers are those, anyway? Maybe the red one's female... the black ones keep, um, bumping into it.  C'mon now, I've been chasing you for, like, fifteen minutes. Hey, I think... yes! I got it!  Wow, are its wings really translucent?"

As it turns out, this is a bee hawk moth.  And hey, I only now noticed that there's also a butterfly in this picture.

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