Post Script

 In the blog I just sent I showed some pictures of a Tarantula Hawk carrying a  paralyzed Tarantula to a spot where it was going to put an egg on it then bury it in a pre-prepared hole. This battle between these mighty opposites, I am sure, has been going on for millions of years, the fiercest wasp, the largest spider. Cheryl and I were lucky to see this dramatic action that very few people have seen, and after I sent the blog I was afraid I had not done it justice, the pictures had not given it sufficient strength and, I think, beauty.

I think perhaps I just didn't make the pictures large enough. Let me try again.

Tarantula and its Nemesis

Not long after we moved into our house in the desert (this is two or three years ago now), we were sitting in our breakfast room looking out over our backyard when Cheryl saw a commotion about sixty feet away and said, "There's a tarantula and a wasp fighting."

We had been eating our lunch, but without saying another word we dropped our silverware, grabbed our cameras, and tore out of the house. This was entirely reasonable behavior for people like us who were heavily into nature photography. What Cheryl with her brief sentence had described was a Tarantula Hawk, a large and ferocious wasp with the most painful sting of any wasp in the country, which was in the act of attacking a tarantula. This creature hunts down tarantulas, stabs them into paralysis, then lays an egg on them so that the larval wasp can feast on its still living flesh. Photographing the battles between these formidable creatures is one of a nature photographer's holy grails and there it was right outside the door.

Well, yesterday history seemed to be repeating itself. I was looking out the same window at almost exactly the same place, and I could pick out the bright red wings of a Tarantula Hawk, and when I put my binoculars on it I could see that it was rolling over the limp body of a tarantula. It had already paralyzed  its prey and was carrying it back to its pre-dug hole (you can see the hole behind it that it is backing into) to bury it.

The first thing it did was crawl down inside its hole, and try to pull the spider under, but the spider wouldn't fit.

So it came back up and got another grip.

Now it's got a better grip and it is trying again to pull it down into the hole (on top of its head.).

And now it is gone.

The larval wasp will continue developing inside the tarantula's body while the wasp mother flies off to find another tarantula, to repeat the whole process.

What is happening around here

Well, what is the most fun right now continues to be our bats. We have four hummingbird feeders hanging along the front of our porch which we have freshly topped up with sugar water. About 7:00 in the evening it is completely dark, and we turn on the porch light, a weak light but strong enough to illuminate the activity. Suddenly the bats are coming in waves, and when we go outside these sturdy little creatures seem like they are barely missing our heads. We try to estimate how many we have, but they are coming so fast, appearing out of and disappearing into the darkness, it is impossible, but we think at times we have seen up to ten at once.

 

 

 

 These are Mexican Long-tongued Bats visiting us at this time of year from farther south. They are not the bats that use echo-locating to catch insects in flight; these are nectar-drinking bats, designed for drinking from flowering cacti, but if hummingbird-lovers want to set out sweets for them that's okay with them too. It's true many people are exasperated when they get up in the morning and find all their hummingbird feeders have been robbed and are totally empty, but we try to re-educate those people to show them how much fun the robbers themselves can be. We and our guests often sit out on the porch on a cool evening to watch them for an hour or so. And fair play, they do feed from flowers too. Here's a picture of one showing its long tongue, and notice its fur is yellow from pollen, from the flowers it has rubbed up against.

The second event here for the last few weeks, more on the exasperating side, less on the entertaining, is that this is  a "Snout year." Snouts (see Cheryl's photo) are small rather drab butterflies whose only distinguishing features are long extended palps (like snouts) that still would scarcely make them noticeable if it wasn't for their propensity to explode their population, often into millions in a small area. That is exactly what is happening right now, which is making people who drive above twenty miles an hour on narrow rural roads feel like mass murderers, the movement of the car stirring up a tide-line of corpses. If you walk by a bush which for some reason is attractive to them you can slap it and they will fly up in clouds. At its peak one day we looked up into an open stretch  of sky and it was filled with butterflies from top to bottom, all traveling in one direction. I had often read about snout years; this is the first I have witnessed.

 

 

The third event, and you have to live right for this one, you can sit at your breakfast nook table looking through the window to the porch where a very handsome young bobcat is standing about six or seven feet away, paying no attention to you.

 

The Porch at night #3

Well. here we are, trying once more to write a blog about the bats, and instead writing  about every other thing on the porch. I was explaining all the tricks I needed to use to get even a not-very-good picture of a fast-moving bat in the dark. And in the meantime Cheryl walked up to the hummingbird feeder, held up her camera, went click quick, and look at these amazing pictures, the best I have ever seen of these creatures in the act of feeding.

 

 

 

 

 

I had wanted for a long time to write about pack rats, because they are so astonishing, and next the long-tongued bats, because they are so astonishing. Now I've finally done something on both of them. I almost feel like retiring, except I know I am sure to discover something else astonishing.