It’s ‘plump,’ hums and looks like a bird. What is odd creature on Blue Ridge Parkway?

A striking creature that looks equal-parts bug and bird is turning up on the Blue Ridge Parkway and National Park Service officials say you may hear it before you see it.

That’s because it hums softly at you from the bushes.

“Is it a bird? Is it a bee? Or, perhaps, something else entirely,” the parkway wrote on Facebook, playing up the mystery. “They look like, hover like and even emit a hum reminiscent of the rapidly beating wings of hummingbirds.”

It’s a big bug, the park says.

Specifically, a hummingbird moth, which are a rare enough sight to alarm tourists who may have heard recent stories of Asian “murder hornets” being found in the country.

Both insects are big and winged — but that’s where the comparisons end, experts say.

Murder hornets, which have a potentially fatal sting, have not been found on the parkway. They’re about 2 inches long, have “orange heads, orange stripes and a pointed rear end with a big curved stinger,” LiveScience.org notes.

Meanwhile, the hummingbird moth is about 1.5 inches long and “rather plump,” according to the U.S. Forest Service. “The tip of their tail opens into a fan (and) they are usually of a rich reddish brown color... Like most moths they have a very long tongue which they carry rolled under their chins.”

Oh, and hummingbird moths do not sting, let alone kill people.

Hummingbird moths are part of an exotic mountain ecosystem along the park that includes a long list of strange animals and plants.

Among the examples recently highlighted by the National Park Service: Poisonous pods called skunk cabbage that generate heat to melt snow, and a cannibal fungus known as Witch’s Butter that resembles lemon Jell-O.