Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


A couple of weeks ago I trekked out to Silverado Canyon to look for one of Orange County’s famous watering holes. Maybe I’ll tell you more about that someday. In any case, the place where I parked my car turned out to have a lovely little ravine with some pink flowers that made a wonderful backdrop for all the butterflies and other critters flying around. So I stopped to take some pictures.

As I was doing this, I heard a hummingbird zip by. I reset my shutter speed and then followed it with my camera and—it wasn’t a hummingbird at all. It was a white-lined sphinx moth, also known as a “hummingbird moth” because it beats its wings at a ferocious speed and sounds just like a hummingbird.

I got several nice shots of this creature. Check out the proboscis action!

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate