Monday, November 24, 2008

Night time follies

Again it's night. All the daytime creatures have settled in for the night and the night creatures are just beginning. We have a lot of windows in our house that provide us with an amazing view during the day. At night they are screens into the discovery channel. When we have the lights on winged insects of all descriptions flock to the glass. At the same time creatures that eat flying insects stop by for their evening meal. In our bathroom we have a 2 meter by 2 meter arched window. It's home to 7 0r 8 small lizards that feast nightly. Some of the older ones are quite obese. Under normal circumstances, in a tree or such, they'd catch the random moth that flew too close. With the light we provide it's much like fishing with dynamite. They have an abundance. They each have an area staked out and if another lizard wanders too close they bite a leg and run them off. The big ones stake out the top of the glass where the bugs all seem to end up. We once saw a program about this type of lizard on TV while in the States. We found that we knew more about the lizards than the narrator. We'd see them from the bottom as well as the top.
We also have some rather fat frogs that will splat on the glass for a snack. Last night we had a beautiful green praying mantis running around madly eating small insects. Our house is a functioning part of the ecosystem, day and night.

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