I love the apparently relaxed way the Hummingbird Hawkmoths hover over their chosen food plants. They manage to give the impression that they’re thinking about something else, while absentmindedly threading that extraordinary proboscis into the nectar tube of a flower.
This, of course, is an illusion created by the camera freezing a split second of their motion – seen in real time they look quite insane, as they hurl themselves around the flowers with great purpose, but absolutely no pattern or logic. Whereas bumblebees tend to work one flower until they think they’ve exhausted it and then move on the next, Hummingbird Hawkmoths dart back and forth seemingly at random, and it’s impossible to predict when and where they might move next. A dragonfly’s brain could probably compute it, but it’s way beyond me.
After disappointing Ōura yesterday, today I’ve tried to create a better balance between my rest and activity periods, and it’s been much more approving. Honestly, if a human trainer treated me this way they’d be shown the door toot sweet, but it seems that after less than a week I’m already in thrall to an inanimate object linked to an app on my phone. Modern life, eh? It’s pretty weird.
R: L2, C10, D68.
