Moths of the Texas Panhandle

I stumbled across this video after seeing an article about hummingbird moths and wondering if they were found in these parts. Back when I worked on drilling rigs, all sorts of insects and moths would be attracted to the lights of the rig at night, sometimes so thick around the lights on the floor that they blocked out most of the light and it was hard to see and often far-too-easy to have one fly into your mouth.

I remember one guy I worked with insisting they were hummingbirds, but those are fairly rare up in this part of the country.  Another guy I worked with would catch the huge moths, unroll their "nose" with a pencil, then tape it inside someone's locker.  When he opened it up the next morning, it was always funny to see him startled by the moth frantically fluttering at the guy's eye level.

(EDIT to add: funny to see the guy scared by a moth, but I always felt sorry for the moth; it was cruel, even though I doubt the moth had a very long lifespan.)

My landlady's son, the younger brother of a classmate, was a sophomore one summer when the moths were prolific around the rig and had to do the same project his brother and I had to do at the same age;  catch 50 different insects and pin them to a board and label them.  I took the young man a lunch box full of moths and asst. other insects I caught one night and he later told me he had over 70 different types of insects and got an "A" for the project!

I used to have some Four O'Clock plants by my porch and during the summer,moths would gather nectar out of the flowers that opened in the late afternoon and stayed open until sunrise the next morning.  I had an old black cat that absolutely loved those moths;  he grew tired of playing with them and discovered he liked the taste.  He wouldn't eat the entire thing, but I would find just the head and wings all over the place, even inside where he had brought them in through the cat flaps. (along with lizards, garden snakes, birds and all sorts of creatures.)