Hummingbird moth
A hummingbird moth is a day-flying hawk moth that hovers at flowers like a tiny hummingbird. Clearwing kinds come out of the cocoon with fully scaled wings and gradually lose most of the scales, leaving clear windows.
What it may mean
A clearwing hummingbird moth starts adult life covered up. When it first crawls out of its cocoon, its wings are fully scaled, like any other moth's. Then, as it flies, the scales drop away from the middle of each wing until only a dark rim is left around clear panes. What it needed at the start, it sheds once it is moving. People wear similar coverings when they begin something: the formal manner at a new job, the rehearsed answers of a first date, the careful politeness with in-laws. Most of them wear off with use, and what remains is lighter and easier to see through. A hummingbird moth at the bee balm might lead you to notice which coverings you still keep from your first days somewhere, and which have already fallen away without your missing them.
Depending on how you saw it
At the flowers in full sun
Most moths are creatures of the night, but hummingbird moths feed in daylight, often in the heat of the afternoon. They simply ignore the rule their family is known for. Which rule about people like you have you happily ignored?
A moth dressed like a bumblebee
The snowberry clearwing is fuzzy, black and yellow, and easily taken for a bumblebee, a look that may make birds think twice. What borrowed look or manner has kept you safe somewhere?
A white hawkmoth in Malta
Maltese lore made the color matter: a white hawkmoth signaled that someone abroad was coming home, and a black one brought bad news. Who far away would you most like to see walk through your door?
Why it happens in nature
Hummingbird moths are hawk moths that fly by day: clearwings in North America and the hummingbird hawk-moth in Europe and Asia. They hold still in midair at flowers and sip nectar through a long, coiled tongue. Clearwings emerge with fully scaled wings and gradually lose most of the scales, leaving transparent patches edged with color.
What folk beliefs say
Malta
In Malta, a 1903 collection says, the hawkmoth or sphinx, if white, betokens the coming home of someone abroad; if black, it is a harbinger of bad news.
Source: Cora Linn Daniels; C. M. Stevans (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences of the World, vol. 2 (1903), vol. 2, p. 665. View the page
To reflect on
What covering did you need at the start of something that has since fallen away without fuss?