The morning after our latest haboob I found an expiring Sphinx moth, battered by the winds and on its last legs.  It was a big one, not as colorful as some, but marked like bark in black and white, with three orange spots on its abdomen.  It’s a fairly large animal: about three inches long, with an abdomen like my little finger, except segmented and furry.  I’ve identified it as  Manduca rustica, the Rustic Sphinx (if you know different, please let me know), which as an adult moth feeds on deep-throated nectar flowers such as Petunias and Tecoma.

<< Manduca rustica (photos A.Shock, click to enlarge)

Although it’s probable that this individual was done in by the wind, it may also have been at the end of its life span anyway.  I carried it to the outdoor table, and took a few macro shots with my cell-phone macro lens.  That I got any results worth sharing is a bit amazing, since the lens, which is designed for a different cell phone than the one I own, has to be scotch-taped to the device.  (Seriously, scotch-taped to the device, not exaggerating.)

Anyway, here’s the sphinx’s face, with its big night-seeing eye, its furry head, and its coiled, straw-like proboscis, plenty long for reaching down the throats of flowers for the good stuff.

This summer, there’s been much haboobery in the Phoenix area, causing a veritable Haboob-O-Rama.  Just this evening (Sunday) we had what was by my count the fourth significant dust storm of the 2011 monsoon season, which should be winding down, but isn’t.  There’s still dust in our yard from the first big one, which came upon us so fast and hit our part of town so directly that I didn’t get any pictures.

Here’s tonight’s haboob, which struck just at sunset. (All photos A.Shock, click to enlarge):

If the photo looks familiar, it’s because #2 haboob hit at about the same time of day, and I got a similar photo of it from a slightly different vantage point.  See that photo here.  Tonight’s haboob was ummm, taller, if that’s an attribute of haboobs, although it may have just looked that way because it was headed right for me. A few seconds after I snapped this shot, it crashed into the neighborhood, turning everything brown and gritty.

<< In between was #3 haboob, which blew in from the west, a little north of our ‘hood.  I got this photo of it engulfing Camelback Mountain, the summit of which is just barely visible as a triangular shadow between the trees in the midground.  Bonus bird: Not that you can tell in the photo, but the bird flying just above the utility wires in the center of the photo is a Lesser nighthawk.  Knowing it, however, should add to the desert ambience of an otherwise power-line filled image.

Doesn’t it look like a Jeep?

Those dark “headlights” are eyes, which jumping spiders, unlike most spiders, rely on to hunt.  I can count three pairs: two on the front (big and little) and one on the side (little).  See ‘em?  There may be more…

We photographed this tiny jumping spider before relocating it outside, since the sofa was not a safe location for it.

So that you can fully comprehend its tininess, know that it’s sitting on my cell phone stylus, which is slightly smaller in diameter than a typical pencil.  Officially: dinkose.  It’s a Dinky Dude of the Desert, arachnid-style.

I don’t know enough about jumping spiders to know its common name, if it has one, or even its genus.  Anyone?  For more info, including technical identification keys and species accounts, click on jumping-spiders.com.  The photos running on the masthead are worth checking it out for.

(Photo by E, edited by A Shock)

This isn’t a short-billed hummer, it’s just that the resolution on a zoom photo wasn’t up to capturing the thin bill against the rough-textured block wall.  Still, pretty good for a phone camera. (photo by A.Shock)

Well, it’s not actually a bird.  Perhaps these posts should be called “Not the Bird”.

Here is an appropriately faded Old West-y snap shot of a neighbor of ours, taken with my cell phone.  Can you spot the non-avian subject?  It’s a Desert Iguana, posing with dignity as if for a Victorian formal portrait, lurking in the heat of the day under a creosote bush a block from our house.

<< Desert iguana under creosote (photo A.Shock). Click once to enlarge.

These lizards are both camera-shy and fast, and this was the best shot I could get: right after clicking it, the liz shot off across the broiling pavement back to the other side of the road and disappeared.

Desert iguanas (Dipsosaurus dorsalis: “thirsty lizard” with a “notable back”) are fairly large lizards — this one was twelve inches from nose to tail-tip — closely associated with creosote bushes, which provide them with food, shelter, and shade.  I’m always thrilled when I see one in our ‘hood, which is only a couple of times a year.  Unlike our other local lizards who eat other creatures and shun the heat of the day by retreating to shelter and burrows, these pale pinkish, blunt-nosed lizards are primarily vegetarian thermophiles who are most frequently seen active and out in the heat of the day in the very hottest part of the summer.  This one was basking on the edge of our black-asphalt street, swishing its long tail slowly back and forth before it fled the camerazza (me).  Click here for an earlier Three Star Owl post on our neighborhood iguanas, here for more species info, and here for still more info and great photos.  If you’re too blasé to click the second link, you will miss reading about this species’ interesting natural history, including why it eats the fecal pellets of other iguanas, and what its thigh glands secrete.  Really, you need to know, so go ahead and click.