This started as an animal post...

Ok. After making you read about birds and lizards you may be interested in the pictures of the Mammals?  (Oh and bugs, you had to read about bugs, TWICE!) (I have more cool bug pictures though. I may or may not share them on here. We'll see. If you are interested in seeing a moth the size of a bird whose relatives terrorize our dining room at 6:30 am during morning worship and make me literally pray that it doesn't swoop on me and make me scream and embarrass myself so badly I have to leave Africa forever.....) Ah man, forget the parentheses.  Lets look at BUGS again!  Where are our buddies around the corner?  Come quick and look at these pictures! You know you are absolutely anxious to see this bird/mothzilla/cringe inducing wonder:

No? Not scary?????

Matt's hand is here to give some perspective. I swear they come even bigger than this, literally the size of small birds. Not tiny birds, the next step up. Small birds.  I'm absolutely serious.  And they somehow get into the dining room and in the morning they fly around and try to find a perch on our unfriendly sealed lights.  I track them with my eyes, you know, as an eye exercise.  I have a deeply embedded fear of moths. (It started in childhood, it's another story.)  I respect the beauty that they can be here in Africa.  (I think this is a moth anyways.  It COULD be a bird. Jury is still out on that one.)  However, I am terrified of them flying at me.  Normally, at home, I handle moth attacks by screaming crazily as they dive-bomb me in bed or in the bathroom and running/leaping/crawling away whilst yelling for Matt to GET RID OF IT NOW!  Another less dramatic alternative is hiding under my best friend's coffee table. (Remember Elsa?) Sometimes I simply close the door and make a bowl of soapy water for them to take an eternal bath in.  These are all excellent, tried and true options.  Unfortunately for me, my years of experience are utterly useless when these monsters flap around in the dining room at 6:30 a.m. and you are supposed to ask for permission to leave the table.  I have plotted out my reaction to this scenario and have decided that prayer, being absolutely still and keeping my eyes closed with my mouth sealed firmly shut until it flies away is my best option if it starts to play at my table.  Hopefully it won't be put to the test.

However, I love butterflies. Maybe Mothzilla is actually a butterfly and I've been over-reacting?  Anyways, even though it's pretty, these I'm-sure-they-are-Butterflies are prettier:

Awww!

I also have a deeply rooted child-hood fear of grasshoppers.  Apparently both my moth and grasshopper fears are learned behaviors that I acquired from other family members, and initially I didn't even mind them. I won't bore you with my grasshopper stories.  There aren't many actually. I just don't like how they jump everywhere and leave spit on your stuff.  The thing with grasshoppers is they don't usually get in your house, they mostly stay outside.  At least, the ones I have encountered.  I have been really working on my irrational moth/grasshopper fears and they ARE getting better.  So much so that I got pretty close to this guy even though I did use my macro zoom:

Isn't he the COOLEST grasshopper you ever saw? Beautiful, which isn't a word I have ever used in the same sentence as "grasshopper" until just now.  See how colorful he is?  You could even zoom on this picture to see the details better.

I have learned that I detest Sand-flies more than any other bug except mosquitoes, spiders and cockroaches.  They are all tied for first place really.  For varying reasons. Sand-flies are worth putting insect repellent on for.  No jokes here.  Another name for these is "no-see-ums" which sounds all nice, "oh, a bug you can't see, no worries."  WRONG.  I have developed the opposite of immunity to these teeny terrors.  Each time they bite me the bites itch worse and seem to last longer.  Also they get bigger.  After you are here longer, I am told that it lessens again.  I'm skeptical.  Also I'm not interested in finding out.  Instead, I'll just try to remember to reach for my repellent!

All in all, our bug experiences here have been cool, and not fear inducing.  The bugs I have pictures of are not in my room, and the only bugs in my room so far are tiny flies or ants or small spiders, dispatched by my husband the bug annihilator.  This I can handle.  The reason that I've spend to much time on them in my blog is that, there are just some amazing looking insects here.   I hope that you have enjoyed and not been bored too much by the bugs I've shared.  Next time I promise to share actual animal pictures.  Later, I will honestly try to share some of our personal adventures here, not just the buggy ones.  :)

P.S. I just googled "world's largest moth" and found out that the largest moth in the world has a ONE FOOT WINGSPAN.  I don't even know what to say about that.

Leaping Lizards!!

Who knows where that title is from?  I know my dad will guess straight away!

I know I mentioned before that we have natural mosquito control here.  Birds, bats, fish and lizards.

Boy Lizard

Girl Lizard

When I was working in the warehouse and trekking all over the place I saw dozens of these, maybe even hundreds in a day.   They are amazing bug hunters, so I don' t  mind them much.  They are also amazing athletes, as evidenced by this home video:

I mean, look at his arm muscles!  These guys just wander around, hunting bugs and doing push-ups all day.  We aren't sure why they do so many push-ups. Personally I think it's to show off.  I know they just go back to their  bush-homes and brag about who ate the most bugs, and who did the most push-ups.  They might even exchange stories of supposed bravado in outwitting the humans yet again.  I can imagine that those who are missing the ends of their tails kind of skulk in the background of those brag-fests. Its's inevitable with all these people and machines everywhere. It's definitely not because they are slow!  They run so fast, it's amazing. From laying flat out on the concrete to disappearing as you come around the corner.   Some of the guys like to chase them, usually the lizards win. They will climb anything and live anywhere.  Plus as you can see, they are really pretty to look at.  

The Birds

 Due to our location and the fact that our property actually includes some jungle within the walls, there is a wide variety of wildlife.  We don't have a picture of every animal or bird that is here but we wanted to show you some pictures of at least a few. Since I come from a Bird-watching family and have a bird as my name-sake it's fitting to give the birds first priority.  :)
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I think there might be hundreds of these birds in or near our property here.  They mostly avoid people getting to close to them.  However, I did notice that when they mow the lawns here that bunches of these birds follow the lawn mowers looking for bugs to eat.  They get surprisingly close to the mowers and when they are so distracted looking for bugs you can get quite close to them.

I think it is called a Cattle Egret

Sorry these aren't great pictures but it's a neat bird so I'm including them:

There are also a large amount of what I think are hawks:

In the evening these hawks start flying around everywhere and they seem to love this tree:

        This picture was taken near twilight so it's hard to see all the birds, but if you click on it, you will see how many there are.

One evening while we were at the pool the hawks were hunting lizards in the grass and we got really close to a couple when they swooped down.

Besides these birds there are several other interesting varieties that I haven't been able to photograph yet.  We have seen what I thought was a pelican, a Pied Crow that has a white vest and looks pretty cool and different types of swallows.  There are thousands that start darting around at night.  One evening I was walking along the covered walkways, and there were hundreds just flying everywhere. I was actually worried they would fly into me.  The new construction of walkways has left them numerous crooks and crannies to nest in so they have been taking over in some areas.  Just think of all the bugs they eat!!

I was going to do just one post on the birds and animals but I think I'll stop here and save the animals for the next one.  Hope you are all doing well, we miss our friends and family back home!