Day 7 of Arizona backyard photography.
Last full day in Arizona. Technically the lightning pictures were form the night before but due to the camera being set to Eastern Standard time (three hours ahead) they ended up lumped with today’s. Talk about your fireworks, a long exposure and patience allowed me to capture these. My Uncle, David Allen Harvey (who is the reason I was out in Tucson) is a professional photographer and has fantastic nature pictures, lightning, astronomy, architecture, portraits, you name it, gave me some great pointers for future shots.
The word monsoon comes from an Arabic word “mausim” which means “season” or “wind-shift”. When one says monsoon one generally thinks of the torrential rains found in India, however according to Arizona State University: School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning Arizona does indeed have its very own Arizona Monsoon. The word monsoon actually describes a season of heavy rains that occur due to a shift in the winds from winter west/northwest to summer southerly/southeasterly direction. The summer shift brings in moisture from Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico and in combination with daytime heating allow for convective (rising warm air and sinking cold air) thunderstorms to form. Typically the rain comes July-September in a series of “bursts” and “breaks” where there are a few days of storms all over the region “burst” followed by a few days to a week of very few storms or “breaks”. Check out the ASU link and this “The Monsoon” from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Weather Service for better justice on the description. Also there is a picture of a rainbow at the tail end of the storm and a rain shaft before the storm.
For this post we have an non-native Mediterranean house gecko which eats insects and seems to be restricted to developed areas. They come out at night, particularly if you leave a light on to attract insects as well, but were extremely shy and so I was forced to use flash to get this picture. Additionally we have another spiny lizard of an unknown species due to only catching it’s head and what I’m pretty sure is an ornate tree lizard. I have found the Reptiles and Amphibians of Arizona website to be useful in figuring out the various lizards. You can identify things with more surety if you can narrow down the region or local where things are found.
I thought I had snapped a picture of a prairie dog, turns out it is actually round-tailed ground squirrel. Like prairie dogs they tend to live in colonies with underground nests. They’re omnivores though they rely on succulent vegetation for water, they will also eat insects and apparently roadkill of their own species. The one pictured can be seen carrying a mesquite seed (Prosopis sp?).
Last is a robber fly on a piece of what looks like dryer sheet. Robber flies have piercing-sucking mouth parts and are insectivorous, meaning the eat other insects which they catch in the air. If handled wrong they can also inflict a painful bite to humans. They are generally considered beneficial insects except when they eat other beneficial insects such as bees.
phototerrascientia 