When I photographed a Hummingbird Clear-winged Moth on Bee Balm recently, I had forgotten the likely connection between the real James Bond and the insect.

On most days, it was staring me right in the face. I own two fine-arts prints featuring the birds of Mount Desert Island by Bond's uncle, Carroll Sargent Tyson Jr. Both prints hang in places of honor in my house.

One of the prints features an American Redstart family, an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail and a ... Hummingbird Clear-winged Moth. (See right and below).

Since a young James Bond is said to have collected the birds that Tyson depicted in the prints, why wouldn't he have collected the insects as well?

As a naturalist for the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia, Bond collected all sorts of fauna for the academy -- from small fish to large bird eggs to assorted reptiles --  during his trips to the West Indies.

A Hummingbird Clear-winged Moth would have been right up his alley.