[3] With a wide geographic range throughout Central and North America, H. lineata is known to feed on many different host plants as caterpillars and pollinate a variety of flowers as adults.

Their head's prothoracic shield, and the anal plate, are one color, either green or orange with small black dots.

[3] A tail-like spine protruding from the back of the body is a typical for sphingid moth caterpillars, known as “hornworms”.

[8] With such a wide geographic range, H. lineata are known to live in a variety of habitats, including deserts, gardens and suburbs.

[7] The foraging patterns of H. lineata varies according to altitude, temperature and other factors, all of which are highly variable over its vast geographic distribution.

As caterpillars they feed on a huge diversity of host plants and as adults they prefer nectar over flowers.

[5] A study from the 1970s focused on H. lineata nectar feeding patterns in Emerald Lake, Colorado, specifically on Aquilegia coerulea flowers.

The author speculates that tongues have lengthened in hawk moths of extratropical regions where it is more difficult and energetically costly to find larval food plants that are often inconspicuous, thus they need to take up more nectar at once to fuel their longer flights.

Conversely, in more northern regions, short tongues are sufficient because finding larval food plants is an easier task and they do not need to take up as much nectar to fuel their flights.

[9] One 2009 study showed that whiter flowers are associated with an annual presence of hawk moths, including H. lineata.

Other hawk moth species with similar range overlap, specifically Sphinx vashti, show a correlation of annual presence with longer spurs on flowers.

[7] Larvae overwinter and can emerge between February and November, at which point they begin to feed on a variety of host plants.

When preparing to transition into the pupal stage, caterpillars dig shallow burrows in the ground where they then stay for 2 to 3 weeks, at which point they emerge as adults.

[2] Adults typically do not survive cold northern winters, but larvae overwinter and moths begin to appear in mid-May.