Dragonfly attracted to house lights
We have a constant stream of nocturnal visitors.
Most of them have six legs and arrive by air.
We don’t appreciate those which would like to suck our blood (mosquitoes are a pain), but the others are welcome enough. The dragonfly above was larger and more handsome than most and didn’t mind posing for a series of photographs, although I do think he has been unduly influenced by the trend for picking grimy industrial backdrops for fashion shoots. I mean, really, there are more attractive settings than the scrap timber stored under the house.
Small moth
This tiny moth, about 7 mm long, is a more typical guest, flying into the house and landing on my desk. A look at my Flickr photos reveals the bizarre moth-fly (a fly that looks like a moth, not vice-versa) on the same background a couple of months ago and this beautiful olive-green moth on the wall nearby. If I left the windows wide open and the lights on, I could have hundreds like this instead of only tens.
Just now, flying ants are common. As I said about the Green-ant queen, warmth and moisture induce the emergence of swarms of winged ants on their way (they hope) to breed and set up new colonies. The one below failed spectacularly, coming to rest on … my mouse.
Flying ant on alien artifact