>This chappy reminds me of those amateur UFO films – shaky focussing on an unfamiliar blobby object and then wild panning to try to stay with it as it blasts away across the night sky at the speeed of light.

Macroglossum stellatarum – or Hummingbird Hawk Moth. Or Pigeontail in German. (Go figure)

Hovers over a flower, in goes the proboscis, – wham, bam, thank you, maam. Zap – he’s gone. Next flower, wild panning to keep up. And he’s like a postie – pretty much the same route every day at about the same time.
Which sort of confirms what the boffins say about his ability to recognise colours.*

Gets up as far as Finland which – at 60°N – is 10° further north than we are and a good 25° away from home. And then he dies.

Unless he gets back over the Alps in time. Which we hope he does.

* Now, here’s a good link-in.

Richard Feynman was interviewed in a film called “The Pleasure of Finding Things Out” and said:

I have a friend who’s an artist and he’s sometimes taken a view which I don’t agree with very well. He’ll hold up a flower and say, ‘Look how beautiful it is,’ and I’ll agree, I think. And he says, ‘You see, I as an artist can see how beautiful this is, but you, as a scientist, oh, take this all apart and it becomes a dull thing.

And I think that he’s kind of nutty. First of all, the beauty that he sees is available to other people and to me, too,I believe, although I might not be quite as refined aesthetically as he is; but I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time I see much more about the flower that he sees. I can imagine the cells in there, the complicated actions inside which also have a beauty….

Also, the processes, the fact that the colors in the flower evolved in order to attract insects to pollinate it is interesting – it means that insects can see the color. It adds a question: Does this aesthetic sense also exist in the lower forms? Why is it aesthetic? All kinds of interesting questions which shows that a scientific knowledge only adds to the excitement and mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds; I don’t understand how it can subtract.

Richard Feynman’s a true treasure and worth his own blog entry.

Good idea, Johnny.