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Is it just a household variety, or something special?

They seem to like buddleia.

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Aleksandar M
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  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it's not about an insect that's **affecting** your garden. Please see https://gardening.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12/are-questions-about-birds-and-other-animals-in-your-garden-on-topic for our policy about these types of questions. – Niall C. Jul 14 '18 at 19:48

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Wow, that little guy is hard to photograph, isn't he? I don't think it is a hummingbird though. It looks like an insect to me. A gigantic one. In the next-to-last of your 7 photos (i.e. #6) you can see his tubular "sippy-tongue" poking into one of the flowers ... unless it is a shadow from one of his feelers. But Hummingbirds don't have tube-tongues or feelers. Also in photo #5 you can pretty much make out the "segments" on his insect abdomen. (Not sure what you call those.)

I think this is likely a Sphinx Moth or something similar. See Wikipedia where it is referred to as a "Hawk Moth".

Hawk Moth using its angled "proboscis"

Amazing creatures! Wikipedia says they are often mistaken for hummingbirds.

Lorel C.
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This isn’t a hummingbird, that’s actually a butterfly! Ok, a moth, to be precise: the hummingbird hawk-moth (Macroglossum stellatarum).

But animal identification is not part of our site’s scope, so I have to flag it for migration to our sister site Biology SE.

Stephie
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