{"id":302,"date":"2013-04-11T00:54:38","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T05:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/?p=302"},"modified":"2013-04-11T00:54:38","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T05:54:38","slug":"nature-101-sphinx-moth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/2013\/04\/11\/nature-101-sphinx-moth\/","title":{"rendered":"Nature 101: Sphinx Moth"},"content":{"rendered":"

While working out in the garden area near the pond this past week, I became distracted by these somewhat large creatures zipping around the purple flowers in the pasture.\u00a0 We’ve had hummingbirds show up before and hover around our red tractor, so I thought perhaps some hummingbirds had arrived and were taking advantage of nectar from the small purple flowers growing in the pasture.\u00a0 They were difficult to get close to,\u00a0but after catching several glimpses of these things,\u00a0they seemed a bit oddly shaped and colored even for a hummingbird.<\/p>\n

Lucky me remembered to bring my cell phone to the pasture with me and I followed these things around until I got a picture that wasn’t just a big blur or grass.\u00a0 When one of these creatures finally\u00a0stopped long enough, I could see that it had a very long, thin “straw” extending from its body and was inserting it into the purple flowers to drink nectar.<\/p>\n

I have never seen one of these in person or in a book, but I could recognize that it was something in the butterfly\/moth category but not what specific kind it was.\u00a0 Fortunately for me, I\u00a0have a husband that not only has a lot of nature knowledge from personal interests, but a hubby that has degrees where he learned all kinds of nature-y stuff.\u00a0 No sense in wasting all his knowledge.\u00a0 After all, we paid a fortune for him to obtain it :)A few pushes of the buttons on\u00a0my phone, and the photo zipped\u00a0through the air across the miles\u00a0and landed on hubby’s phone.\u00a0 And once again, hubby came through with an answer via text message.\u00a0 The unidentified flying object in the photo is a Sphinx Moth.<\/p>\n

A Sphinx Moth.\u00a0 Neat.\u00a0 It’s really pretty.\u00a0 I’m glad to know what it is.\u00a0\u00a0Then came the bad news from hubby.<\/p>\n

This nifty thing:<\/p>\n

\"White<\/a>

White Lined Sphinx Moth drinking nectar from Henbit flowers in our pasture.<\/p><\/div>\n

Is actually one of these:<\/p>\n

\"tomato<\/a>

Tomato hornworms\u00a0photo courtesy of Luciano Burtini, BC, Canada<\/p><\/div>\n

Well,\u00a0 that was kind of depressing news.\u00a0 That beautiful thing zipping around the pasture is going to be a pest to contend with once the garden gets put in.\u00a0 Not to mention that the feel of one of those fat green worms between your fingers as you try to pull them off your tomatoes when they have a death grip on your plant is REALLY disgusting!\u00a0 I’ve actually squished them in my hand trying to get them to let go of my tomato plants before.\u00a0 Blech.<\/p>\n

Ah well, I have learned something.\u00a0 I know what the moth looks like.\u00a0 I know what the worm looks like.\u00a0 And while I find the moth a beautiful part of nature, at least I know where those grubby caterpillars come from and will work hard to protect the tomatoes from day one of planting since they have arrived in the area before I planted.<\/p>\n

And hopefully I will remember to stuff some rubber gloves in my pockets when I go to the garden so I have something between my skin and those things when I pick them off the tomato plants and throw them to the chickens.<\/p>\n

So if you have been wondering what the other life cycle of those pesky tomato pests look like, now you know!\u00a0 And if you’re planting tomatoes, look for them.\u00a0 They’ll be coming to a neighborhood near you soon. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While working out in the garden area near the pond this past week, I became distracted by these somewhat large creatures zipping around the purple flowers in the pasture.\u00a0 We’ve had hummingbirds show up before and hover around our red tractor, so I thought perhaps some hummingbirds had arrived and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[32,108],"tags":[110,111,109,46],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gardening","category-nature","tag-garden-pests","tag-hornworms","tag-sphinx-moth","tag-tomatoes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/04\/SphinxMoth2013.jpg?fit=281%2C188&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2wWew-4S","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":309,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/309"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.polarisstarfarm.com\/adventures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}