Day 17-21 Things with Wings

Living in an outdoor house in Costa Rica is very exciting and constantly interesting especially if you like insects. This big boy visited the kitchen counter one of my first night’s here:

Rhinocerous Beetle

Katydids, grasshoppers, moths and beetles are constant visitors and can get annoying if they become inadvertent seasonings in the skillet as you are cooking dinner.

Katydid

Praying Mantis

Positively gigantic moth and teapot

This giant grasshopper would have terrified me if I hadn’t seen one in the jungle earlier. It was a full eight inches long and Itsy was pretty interested in it. Just as I was shooing her away from it (since it seemed to be a significant portion of her body weight), Nikita (the other dog) trotted by, snapped it up and swallowed it.

Butterflies stay pretty much in the garden and I would love to get a great picture of a blue morpho the most magical of them all with iridescent turquoise wings that light up the landscape wherever they are.

Not a blue morpho

There are other animals besides insects (and birds) that fly right through the house. I couldn’t figure out what was nibbling on the bananas ripening on the counter until I was up late one night and saw the world’s largest moth flapping through and pausing in the kitchen. The moth turned out to be a fruit eating bat that was doing laps over the bananas taking a bite with every pass.