I've been neglecting this side of the house.

Yesterday as I was walking to dinner, I saw 6 red-wattled plovers flying back and forth over our compound chasing each other. They were making a hell of a racket, sounding somewhat like terns calling.

The migrants seem to be mostly gone. I've been spending more time looking at insects this last week.

A few days ago there was a good bit of ant activity. There's one species around our building that has long legs and sticks its abdomen up in the air. I found a group cleaning out their nest. There were large piles of insect parts being piled up outside the nest, beetle shells, a bee head, dead ants. Must have been spring cleaning.

I also found thousands of small black ants harvesting seeds from some type of mustard plant. Ants covered the plants and gnawed the tiny seeds out of the string-like pods. I followed a parade of ants back to their hole, each one carrying one tiny seed.

The lights outside our building have had some noctuid moths, though not many species yet. Last night there were thousands of tiny leafhoppers, a couple adult antlions, some ground beetles and a pair of damselflies.

The rain of the last two days should bring out some new stuff soon.

One of the guys saw an animal near our tents that sounded like a hedgehog. I'll keep a lookout.