Newly Emerged Carolina Sphinx

Subject:  ID a bug
Geographic location of the bug:  Orange County Southern CA
Date: 07/25/2021
Time: 03:00 PM EDT
Your letter to the bugman:  Found this bug crawling in my lawn and couldn’t ID it. It’s about 2 inches long.
How you want your letter signed:  Reegs44

Carolina Sphinx newly emerged

Dear Reegs44,
We suspect you have a nearby garden where you have planted tomatoes in the past.  This is a newly eclosed Carolina Sphinx that began life as a Tobacco Hornworm feeding to the leaves of tomato and related plants, which then burrowed into the dirt to pupate, possibly last fall, only to emerge hours before you encountered it.  Its wings have not yet fully expanded and it is not yet able to fly.  We suspect it is now a fully realized imago of a Carolina Sphinx.

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