Hawk-moths - honorary butterflies

Several times this year, I saw a hummingbird hawk-moth, first in our front garden, and then, a month or so later, at Hillier Gardens. 

The picture above of a nectaring hummingbird hawk moth isn't mine (sadly!), but is taken by Charles J Sharp. 

Hummingbird hawk-moth is not the only hawk-moth species I've ever seen. In the past, I also saw elephant hawk-moths a few times (again, the picture isn't mine, but comes from this web-site).

In addition to these two species, I have seen one or two others in the past, but wasn't able to identify them then. 

Hawk-moths really appeal to me, even though they're not butterflies. So what are they really? Where do they fit?

First of all, they are lepidopterans, just as butterflies are. So they are related to butterflies. But not very closely. This phylogeny (from this published paper), based on DNA data, shows where they fit within Lepidoptera. All butterflies belong to the superfamily Papilionoidea, just above the centre in this tree, whereas hawk-moths are all in a family called Sphingidae, at the bottom of the tree. 

Another tree, from this published paper, based on different DNA data, tells basically the same story.

Hawk-moths (Sphingidae) belong to a superfamily called Bombycoidea, together with emperor, moon and luna moths (Saturniidae), and silk moths (Bombycidae), plus a few other, less well-known families. By the way, the largest moths in the world (atlas and hercules moths) also belong to this superfamily

To give you more of feel of this superfamily, here is an emperor moth (picture credit, Chris Lythall, this web-site) ...

... a luna moth (Michael Crowley, this web-site) ...

... and a silk moth (from this web-site).

To help me identify hawk-moths from now on, I ordered this easy fold-out guide to Britain's hawk-moths published by the Field Studies Council.

As the title of this blog posts states, hawk-moths are honorary butterflies to me!