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Sphingids Over Water
Lepidopterological note. Written in 1947.
Published in Lepidopterists' News I (November 1947).
ON a hot August day, from a bridge in Estes Park, Colo., my wife and I watched for almost a minute a striped Hawk Moth (Celerio) poised above the water, facing upstream against a swift current, in the act of drinking. The delicate wake produced by the immersion of the proboscis was a special feature of the performance. This should not be confused with the dipping-the-abdomen habit noticed by me -- and other Russian collectors -- in the case of Smer. populi and S. amurensis.
V. Nabokov
[Lepidopterists' News I: 82]
Copyright © 2000 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; April 2000; Nabokov's Butterflies, Sphingids Over Water - 00.04; Volume 285, No. 4; page 72.