Our Porch at Night (part two)

In the previous blog (Our Porch at Night [part one]) I was talking about our bats, and how we entertained dinner guests and ourselves sitting in the window that gave onto our porch with the outside light on, watching the bats streaking by emptying our hummingbird feeders.  It looked like a close-in bombing raid, in a sinister way rather like the attack on Pearl Harbor, especially with the distant thunder rumbling. I had always wanted to get a good photo of these bats in flight, though it seemed impossible, but I made some progress this time, and I will make another try tonight.

But what I'm writing about here is that once we came outside in the dark to try to photo the bats, we were quite astonished at the variety of life we found on the porch. We took our big flashlight and flashed it against the back of the porch, in other words, the outer wall of our house, and the first thing we saw was a red-spotted toad, unexpected so far from any water. And right next to it, not unexpected, but certainly

 making us take notice, was a Bark Scorpion, the most venomous  of the scorpions. It's true I  kept one briefly as a pet, but that was contained within an aquarium, not wandering free to climb into our shoes before we put them on in the morning.

Next was a Mediterranean Gecko, not a surprise, as they must be in everybody's home in Tucson, but usually this introduced species is found inside the house. These exotic creatures are always welcome.

Most fun was to find the porch was teeming with Pocket Mice. These tiny creatures resemble miniature Kangaroo Rats. In fact I believe they also, at least occasionally. walk upright on their hind legs.

And finally, and most dramatic, an enormous jet-black tarantula.

During the day the porch is generally inhabited by more "normal" creatures, round-tailed ground squirrels, three or four species of lizards, two or three dozen species of birds, an unending line of harvester ants, an occasional rattlesnake, most of these attracted by the meal worms we throw out, and the hummingbird feeders we refill after the bats have emptied them.

And at the very moment I wrote these words about the daytime inhabitants of the porch, a brand new species appeared there for the first time. We saw what we thought was a large swallowtail butterfly out the window, and, looking to identify which swallowtail it was, we could see it was dark with almost no visible markings. We grabbed our cameras and rushed outside and saw it wasn't a butterfly at all, it was an enormous moth: a Black Witch. In our experience, these big day-flying moths appear out of nowhere, can be seen in the yard for a few days usually flying at tree-height, than go on their way, enwrapped in the mystery their name suggests.