It is a whole different world after dark and, for most nature photographers, post-sunset generally marks the end of the working day. As darkness settles in it’s time to kick back and relax, or tackle the relentless task of editing digital images, or plan the next day’s shoot. But the shooting opportunities of the night should not be ignored, for there are truly wonderful subjects that are best seen, or may only be seen, long after the sun sets. Under the mantle of darkness, many of these animals are incredibly tame.

	Nocturnal mammals, like this ringtail cat, are rarely seen, but are more common than you would suspect. This one regularly raided the hummingbird feeders each night in southern Arizona.

Of course, many familiar animals are mainly nocturnal, but I’m not talking about raccoons, bobcats, foxes, or deer, for these animals are far from innocent or ignorant of man. Even at night, most species that occasionally travel by day are fearful or cautious enough to make nocturnal photography just as difficult, if not even more so, than it would be during the day. No, the species I’m talking about rarely have contact with people.

Years ago, as I wrote my first book while sitting in front of a window in an upstairs office, I noticed something odd filling the entrance hole of a bird box I’d mounted on a tree for great crested flycatchers. Grabbing a pair of binoculars, I discovered that a flying squirrel had adopted the box. Flying squirrels are common through much of their range, and the southern flying squirrel is found in every state east of the Mississippi. It is perhaps the most common species of squirrel throughout much of its range. Even so, most people have never seen one.

You may never know one’s near you, unless you listen for its bird-like chirps at night, or discover it feeding at a sunflower bird feeder—or at a special bait station like the one I set up that very afternoon. That squirrel, or another, discovered my feeding station that very night, and within three days a half dozen squirrels

	Flying squirrels can be surprisingly abundant, and are perhaps the most common species of squirrel in their habitat. However, they are rarely seen unless baited with a feeder.

were visiting the feeder. That’s when I discovered just how tame a nocturnal animal can be, for on the third night a flying squirrel accepted a pecan from my fingers—and within a few weeks several different individuals would feed out of our open hands. Try that with a chipmunk just three days after you’ve spied your first one!

You can assume your local woodlot has flying squirrels if you know it has eastern chipmunks and gray squirrels. The latter two species are great indicators that the habitat can, and probably does, support a nocturnal version of these day-active species. Throughout much of Canada and the northeastern US, in parts of the Appalachians, through the northern Rockies and the Pacific Northwest, southern flying squirrels are replaced by a slightly larger species, appropriately named the northern flying squirrel. While I have had no field experience with this species, they are said to be equally tame.

In the drier areas of the west, another interesting group of nocturnal rodents, the aptly named kangaroo rats and kangaroo mice, display an equally trusting nature. These beautiful rodents range in size from 6 to 13 inches, with most of their length coming from their long tails which are used for balance when jumping and making hairpin turns.

	This kangaroo rat was incredibly tame and accepted our lights within one half-hour of our setting up at its burrow.

I’ve worked with Merriam’s and banner-tailed kangaroo rats in the Sonoran Desert south of Tucson. Finding the rats is easy, for they construct large, conspicuous, vegetation- and debris-free mounds, usually beneath a mesquite or paloverde tree. You can usually identify an occupied kangaroo rat burrow by tail marks or a scraped, clear path, while cobwebs, often the work of black widow spiders, mark abandoned burrows. K’rats readily respond to bait—a small handful of sunflower or mixed birdseed works great— and will gobble up a surprising amount within just a few minutes, collecting the seed and storing it in huge cheek pouches to carry back to an underground larder.

	Perhaps because they are smaller and dominated by larger rodents, little desert pocket mice are very aggressive, and will come to our bait within minutes of setting up. When a kangaroo rat appears, the mice leave, or are chased by the larger k’rat.

The tameness of kangaroo rats, or the pocket mice that often sneak in as well, always amazes me, for the desert is rife with predators for a small rodent. Rattlesnakes are common, as many as 200 per square mile in ideal habitats according to one source, as are other rodent-eating gopher, whip, glossy, and king snakes. Often, while I sit quietly in the darkness waiting for a kangaroo rat to appear, I’ll hear the distant yelps of dozens of coyotes scattered across all four compass points, or the trill of a western screech owl, or the soft hoots of a great horned owl—animals that would love to snack on a kangaroo rat. So it amazes me how, after only a few minutes of habituation, a K’rat or pocket mouse will display no fear, sometimes actually hopping between my legs or trying to climb into my pocket to get at seed.

Owls, too, can be remarkably tolerant after dark. In our woods at Hoot Hollow, we’ll occasionally have a screech owl perch above us if we’re out and about after dark. By day, that same owl would be only a tree stump mimic, with its ear tufts held stiffly erect and its eyes mere angled slits as it sits, hoping to avoid detection.

In Arizona, we’ve often had sparrow-sized elf owls, western screech owls, and whiskered screech owls calmly watch us for a few minutes when we’d discover them at night. In months of field time in that area, I’ve seen just one, roosting deep inside a cedar—during the day.

	At night, normally wary owls may be very tolerant. This elf owl spent nearly an hour at several perches while ten photographers clicked away.

Many snakes and most amphibians are nocturnal and far more approachable after dark than during the day. At night I’ve encountered rattlers lying calmly coiled whereas, during daylight hours, they would likely rattle and coil into a striking or defensive posture.

Most turtles lay their eggs at night and, under the cover of darkness, are oblivious to a photographer. I’ve had my best luck finding turtles in the late evening, before sunset, just as they begin to dig their nests. It is important to keep your distance during that time; otherwise the turtle may stop digging and abandon the attempt that night. After dark, and once the holes are started, the turtles show no interest in anything but the task at hand as they laboriously scoop out sand or soil with their hind feet.

During the breeding season, many species of frogs and toads call most actively after dark. Most usually stop calling when approached, but do not hop off and, after a few minutes the males resume their croaks, trills or peeps. While their mating songs can be deafening up close, it can still be surprisingly difficult to locate, for their calls are somewhat ventriloquial. It’s easier to locate a singing frog or toad when two people are looking, as both can guess at the source of the call and, by triangulation, narrow the search. Some may choose to sing from underneath a cupped leaf and beneath a tussock of dried grasses in the middle of the swamp!

	Although only an inch or so long, a spring peeper's call is almost ear-splittingly loud at close range. Nevertheless, these little tree frogs can be difficult to spot as they often call from beneath a leaf or grassy shelter.

I often locate my nocturnal subjects by their eye shine. I’m sure you’ve seen the eye shine of a deer or rabbit in a car’s headlights, but many of you may not have observed the same phenomenon while holding a flashlight.

A car’s powerful headlight extends far enough that the parallax between your position, sitting inside the car, and the headlights is negligible when the headlights reflect back from an animal’s eyes. In contrast, most folks hold a flashlight at or near waist level, and are using that light at much closer distances, so that the parallax between the flashlight and the holder’s eyes is too great. However, if you would hold your flashlight beside your head, at eye-level, there is no parallax and you’ll see an animal’s eye shine.

In this way I’ll spot frogs and toads and, even more surprisingly, the bright metallic gold eye shine of many spiders. Yes, spiders’ eyes reflect as well, and while the light you see is just one glowing spot, not six or eight individual eyespots, it is amazing how bright that reflection can be, and how small a spider one can find by that method. Macro photographers will appreciate their subject’s calmness, as most spiders will virtually ignore a focusing light and not dart off to cover.

	Many spiders are active at night and are very tolerant. It’s easy to find a spider by its eye shine, provided you hold a flashlight up high and close to your eyes to catch the reflection.

How do nocturnal animals react to a flashlight at night? The answer varies by the species, but most are oblivious to a flashlight if it is covered by a red lens or, in a pinch, by a red piece of cloth taped or secured by a rubber band. We found, for example, that we often needed to reduce the intensity of a powerful headlight’s beam when we worked kangaroo rats. However, most kangaroo rats become acclimated to the lights rather quickly and, before the shoot is over, we’re generally using the lights uncovered and at full power.

Every summer, students at our courses at Hoot Hollow enjoy an evening or two photographing six to eighteen flying squirrels that visit a feeding station we’ve placed outside our studio. Just after dark, squirrels glide in from all directions, landing in the surrounding trees before progressing, in darting skips and jumps, to the hoards of pecans we’ve placed in hollow logs or tree cavities. The squirrels are clearly visible, as we use powerful dry-wall style floor lamps that bathe the entire area in light. Like the k’rats, the flying squirrels are, initially, a bit shy around the lights and climb down on the shaded side of the trees. After a few evenings, however, the squirrels accept the lights and perch on the feeder, gobbling away while enough flashes light up the forest to do a vanload of paparazzi proud.

I’ve had great fun with another rarely-seen small rodent species: the pocket gopher. Gophers are despised as an agricultural and garden pest. The chubby hamster-like rodent burrows beneath the surface munching on roots or entire plants, often pulling the latter straight down into the soil.

	Most pocket gophers rarely see people. However this little subterranean rodent showed no fear once it grew accustomed to our presence.

One year, in southern Arizona, a pocket gopher started feeding on the birdseed we’d sprinkled right outside our cabin. At first, the gopher just dug beneath the seed. Eventually, however, as it grew accustomed to this steady source of food, the gopher created a little opening from which it would feed. We accommodated our little buddy by placing handfuls of seed almost within reach of its burrow, and soon the gopher was stretching nearly completely out of its hole to get the seed.

Whenever we’d spot the gopher we’d call to it, christening it "Goofy, the gopher" before adding a new deposit of birdseed. Remarkably, it seemed to recognize our voices and it wasn’t long before it associated the sound of our voices with fresh seed. We soon had the pocket gopher climbing onto our outstretched hand to eat the seed. As you might expect, this presented some wonderful shooting opportunities with a species one almost never sees.

Although most nocturnal species acclimate to lights quickly, it is important to remember that these animals may be extremely wary at first contact. We’ve waited for hours for kangaroo rats to acclimate, watching with frustration when the tiniest noise—a shoe squeezing on shifting sand, the rustle of a shirt or jacket sleeve, the engagement of an auto-focus motor, sent a k’rat zipping back into its burrow. Sometimes this habituation took several nights, and we’d spend only an hour or so the first night or two just getting the k’rats accustomed to our presence. Conversely, we’ve found that kangaroo rats have individual personalities, and some k’rats are tolerant of a surprising amount of activity within a half hour of the first contact.

Remember, too, that the flashlight or floodlights you’re using for watching will not be the light you’ll use for photographing. For that, of course, you’ll want to use an electronic flash. Set your camera’s shutter speed at the fastest flash synchronization speed, and your aperture appropriate for the subject or the working distance, keeping in mind that if you are using a small aperture like f/16 or f/22 your flash won’t travel very far. Close-up, as you’d be for spiders, frogs and toads, kangaroo rats, smaller apertures will not present a problem.

My nocturnal photo adventures have rewarded me with great images of unusual species, and I’ve been treated to some wonderful, unique, and intimate experiences with seldom-seen creatures. But don’t take my word for it, discover for yourself the photographic opportunities available after dark.

All images Copyright © Joe and Mary Ann McDonald