There are so many living things in the Wind River Canyon, that few people have ever set eyes on, that it's sometimes difficult to decide what to tell you about in my weekly blog.  Sure, Bighorn Sheep, Deer, Juniper, the Wind River and even our Vultures are easy to spot; if you pay attention as you blast through at speeds the men who built the first road through the Canyon would have thought crazy.  But it's really the little things, that people don't see, that are the most fun to try and educate you....and myself.

     I love teaching people about the Hummingbirds of the Wind River Canyon; right at this moment we have two nesting pair of Black-chinned Hummingbirds nearby, and male Broad-Tailed Hummingbirds moving north for the summer mating season; but this week's blog is about something harder to find than Hummingbirds.  

     One-eyed Sphinx Moth----just the name sounds mysterious and secretive; we have only seen a few in the fifteen years we've been living in this cabin.  I can ruminate why they seem so scarce; the caterpillars are big, green and edible; and the moth itself is large with a wingspan of over four One-eyed Sphinx Moth, Wind River Canyon, WyomingOne-eyed Sphinx Moth, Photographed in the Wind River Canyon, Wyoming. spread inches; as big as they are they must be lunch for someone and a Magpie will eat anything, except carrots. 

     The One-eyed Sphinx Moth is obviously misnamed, because as you can see for yourself he's got two blue "eyes."  The main colors vary widely across their western U.S. and Canadian habitats.  The scalloped wings and beige abstract coloring seems dominant, but keep in mind that the Sphingidae family of this moth group contains more than 1,450 different species, and they live over vast regions of Earth.  Their "blue eyes" are not visible in a resting state; the eyes are seen only when the Moth is threatened, like with me hovering over him with a big camera. 

     What really startled me was the fact that the adults do not feed!  That's right, they are born in the Spring to fly around and do the nasty, and that's about it.  The deep rose color is beautiful and reproduced as near to Mother Nature as I can get it.  I photographed this nearly perfect example of the One-eyed Sphinx Moth on a piece of driftwood near our place yesterday.  I used a Canon 7D with the 70-200mm f/4 IS L-series marvel that I also will use to photograph a wedding later this month.  I was perched on a rock-wall shooting down with the on-camera flash used for a little fill lighting; the morning sun giving nice shadows to the wings.  

     This is the very first time I've gotten to photograph a One-eyed Sphinx Moth in fifteen years, and it was far easier than photographing Hummingbirds or Orioles.  Yet these large moths are seldom seen and rarely photographed well; it's the very first time they've been photographed here in the Wind River Canyon, as are the wildlife on my website HogbatsPhotography.com, none of the living things have been documented in the Wind River Canyon before.  So slow it up next time and look for the unseen wildlife in the magical Wind River Canyon.