The Snowberry Clearwing

Hummingbird moth sounds ordinary. Snowberry Clearwing lifts the little creature to the level of exotic flier.

While I watched for half an hour, this little clearwing flitted from bloom to bloom in Ronn's garden, darting and hovering, zipping and zapping. I never got a decent picture because he never stopped. One photographer described the clearwing as "moving and zipping like a bumblebee on a cocktail of angel dust and caffeine" (http://www.flickr.com/photos/martytdx/196673376/). Another wrote, "I've found that those pesky, hard-to-shoot creatures that fly a lot are easier to get pictures of when you glue 'em down. Seriously, this one was just resting on a squash leaf and let me get a few shots before buzzing off on nectar patrol" (http://www.flickr.com/photos/martytdx/950841128/in/set-72057594108431081/). Not one of my photographs catches the physical beauty of this moth. But several do catch his persistent enthusiasm, his constant movement. Writing a daily snap means taking daily pictures, both of which have taught me this: it's the attending in the moment to what I see that counts, even when I can't recreate either seeing eye -- the photographic one or the language one.