Thursday, June 22, 2006

late night visitors

My "studio" is in a bay window area of the house, so the edge of my table is only about 8 inches from the window. The light is often on late at night, since that's one of my prime work times. The light attracts a lot of bugs to the window, and the bugs attract a lot of tree frogs. They are hugely entertaining to watch when they are hunting bugs. The best tactic seems to be to just sit still and wait for bugs to walk past (bugs apparently aren't very smart). Some frogs "stalk" their prey more than others. Sometimes they seem to overestimate their abilities, I've often seem them take a rather large leap to try to get a bug. Of course when on the ground this may work, but being on a vertical surface gravity tends to take over and they fall off into the juniper bush below, little limbs flailing on the way down. I wonder if the other frogs laugh when that happens.

I took a picture of one of them. They are generally 3/4" to 1" long from nose to butt. Most are brownish in color, sometimes a bit striped and sometimes solid colored, though they also come in shades of gray, pale green, metallic gold, and metallic copper. From underneath though they all look the same! The reflection is from my light.

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