the teaser of rain

The cloudy weather and the few drops of rain we have had seems to be changing animal behaviors in very non definable ways. Without the powerful sun and heavy heat, there is less reptile activity. The tamarisks are in flower, but I am not sure what is pollinating them.Most of the frogs I am seeing now are very large females laden with eggs. There are starting to be more squished amphibians on the side of the road, too.

The large amphibians are not at risk from snake predators, but here is an example of a guy looking for the smaller, one year old frogs and toads. This is a hognose, very genteel and calm snake.

The computer still calls this a recluse, but I have my doubts

This picture looks much better made large. I think the caterpillar is getting ready to pupate.

This flea beetle ready stood out in steely blue against a green leaf.

Usually, lizards make good camera subjects if they can hold still for long enough. They tend not to fly off like the birds do. This guy doesn't have the usual stripes and is bigger than the average. I had to take wider shot, as he was getting ready to rush away.

This is not one of the usual moth species I see at the hospital. Apart from the weird antenna, it also has spectacular patterning for a moth. A lot of the other insects are looking very metallic. The computer identified this as a mexican tiger moth; will need more investigating.

Walking in the ditch

Its kind of weird, I walk the ditch here twice a day, everyday. I am passingly familiar with the plants and animals, yet, when we went INTO the ditch and looked around, everything was the same, yet it was all different

This bullfrog was in the ditch and HUGE, very swollen and I had to try to catch her by hand. She was as slippery as soap and she snorted, and hissed and swelled, and bleated, chirped and growled until I left her alone. Normally I grab them in a net and they barely move. Sometimes they cover their eyes with their forefeet.

Crayfish are hard to see in the ditch normally, but this time, being much closer to them, we were able to watch them dart backwards.

Just about everything in the ditch is invasive including these golden clams, which hide just under the mud. A sieve is great for pulling them up. I hear they are edible, but I'm never going to try.

Mosquito fish are best chased by hand with a small net, if the purpose is to be a kid...

Of course, this lizard is my first lasso. The technique is to put a slip line on a fishing pole in waxed dental floss and slip it over a snoozing lizard's head. the big lizards are the easiest to catch. The lizards don't seem to be bothered by this rough handling after they are released.

Corrales has a multitude of ants, and unlike the city, there are many types, all acting differently. The big guys seem to hunt insects at night on the walls. The smallest ones are more likely to be out in the hot sun, doing whatever it is ants do.

This is an absolutely huge winged carpenter ant, I think a drone. I was convinced it was a wasp, but it isn't based on the head shape.

Drumming up business

I'm noticing the cottonwood seedling seem to like a good soaking in hot sun, they are beginning to sprout and I hope I can raise some here. I think constant moisture is the key. The Elm seeds seem to prefer a bit of shade, but they are definitely the faster growers, already putting out their real leaves.

the midges are making a reappearance as the temperature rises again after the cold snap we just had. I'm seeing the ants coming out as well.

There hasn't bee a lot of crayfish around, just a couple in the ditch. There are plenty of burrows just above the water line, but I suspect they need to be above water a while before the great crayfish migration.

This is a small bird poop. The interesting thing is the blue stain, likely from the mulberry tree in the next lot. The small bird, likely a nuthatch, probably unloaded to make a quicker takeoff. This is a common practice for birds the don't need to be carrying extra weight on takeoff. The white stuff is a type of urine that many animals make. It has no water in it.

It's easy to see hummingbirds fighting over who "owns" the feeder, but I watched three woodpeckers fight over who owns a telegraph pole. There are 8 poles in a small area, but the one by my house seems the most sought after. I have seen them sit at the top to broadcast their drumming sounds. I guess a long stick cemented into the ground gives good resonance,. It I hadn't realized how much work went into securing the best site.

Cool mornings, and cooler snakes

The cool air made it a little surpirsing to see such a variety of animals in Corrales today. It was almost jacket weather again. But of course this will not last. The moisture in the east of the country will not help us much, of course.It was hard to get this guys nose in the picture, but you can just make out the little upturned shovel that makes this stout fellow a hognose snake.

There are much fewer midges and small winged beasties around, but that didn't stop this spindly cellar spider from coming out. This family has very small fangs, but a impressive venom load. They are famously docile however and their fangs are way too short to affect humans.

The same applies to this hognose. Notice no rattles or zebra stripes on the  tail. Also, almost no movement when approached. These guys are very chill, but I as a rule do not handle snakes. Who wants to have to explain that he mis-identified a snake to hospital staff?

 Hognoses are specialist toad eaters and they were following the scent of these guys who are currently hiding in nearby gopher holes. A little too big and fast for most of the hognoses, but they must be releasing eggs and hatching toadlets somewhere.

there is a sudden appearance of these snowy egrets. We watched one at Valley del Oro. It seems to be a crayfish and amphibian hunter. While back at Corrales we watched 2 migrating flocks fly past, they definitely seems to be visiting the area for a while. They have yellow feet.

Memorial weekend

There are people everywhere right now. Its weird to see so much trash around, there were huge fishing hooks lying around. Its hard to imagine there are fish that big in the ditch! The Corrales police have also taken to hanging around the Andrews lane in the afternoons, and as the space gets tight, there are more and more fishermen and dog walkers moving up the ditch in our direction.Just started finding the mulberry on the ground. Seems early, but the hot weather might be starting everything early. I noticed only a small section of the fruits are ripening.

I am starting to lean a bit more about the neighborhood freshwater snails, so much more interesting than those boring introduced garden snails. I think this small lump is a egg mass. There are a multitude of tiny snails, but I'm not that into them...yet. It's strange to think of snails living in water and being air breathing.

A good example of how animals don't read the textbooks. Saw this one toad-pole in the Rio Grande, when the rest of his buddies were hiding in the edges of the still pools.

This view of the river is not what I an seeing this week-end. There are a lot of people dipping their toes in the water this week-end. I don't often see the rio grande being used as a beach!

This June bug is a harbringer of things to come, but he turned up a little early. He looks like the furry guy in Gremlins

Took me a while to figure out this little guy is a elm seed bug. There are many little beetles right now, but I think there are many different species.

This single bird came in and seemed to be doing pretty good with fishing. Pity there is too many people chasing it off.

There are many turtles in our local ditch, but there is a big difference between just another red-eared slider, and this guy. Notice the large head. This common snapping turtle is usually hiding in the mud and almost never sun bathing.

There is a small patch of flowering willows on the clear ditch which has an amazing number of pollinators and other insects.

when birds clash

Right now there is a pretty rowdy show, as all the birds display and figure out territory. We got to watch a hummingbird bug a woodpecker who was trying to set up a sounding board out of a nearby telephone pole. The young woodpecker was chased off and the hummingbird returned to watchfulness. Our new hummingbird feeders appear to have had the effect of attracting aggressive hummingbird that now chase off the other bird species. The downside of nature being so interconnected.
The same effect is seen when people feed birds at a duck pond, or in their backyards. The pushiest birds chase off everything else from the new resource, and the diversity decreases. human will not stop feeding wildlife, but its funny how the effect is often the opposite of what was intended.

It was kind of strange to see this night heron out during the day. I think he was keeping an eye on the fishermen on the opposite bank to make sure they were catching his dinner. I occasionally see him in the twilight. This is a bad picture but I only had the smartphone on hand to snap a quick pic. The striking thing about him was the little mullet these guys have on the back of their head, gives them a lot of character

There are a lot of shield bugs right now, going by names like "stink bugs, squash bugs, asssasin beetles,etc. They are migrating to delicate plants to suck the juices out of. The heavy wind right now seems to blow them off course easily

A lot of different dragonflies in the ditch mating and laying eggs in the water. Almost all of them seem to be a variation on blue.

Snakes and Moths

This picture was taken AFTER the swarm has be scared by the door closing. There are moths everywhere right now and they seem to squirt some sort of defensive fluid. I think it has some sort of allergen properties. They are cutworm or miller moths. Bumper year, it seems.

This is a different sort of moth, it has friges, presumably to make the wing flapping quieter?

A work friend brought these bugs in to identify. A swarm of some sort has settled in her house. It seems the moths are not the only ones around.

There is a huge variety of bugs around right now in the hot dry heat. Most are only pretty if you take the time to get up close to photograph them.

There were many snakes down by the ditch. We did go during the heat of the day and I wonder if that explains why we saw only coachwhips, which like the high heat. This danger noodle was pretty...asertive and was buzzing his tail, even though he had no rattles. he slipped into a nearby burrow.

Woodhouse toads are everywhere. along with their tadpoles. Weirdly, these guys are poor swimmers, they can even drown if they are forced into fast moving water for long periods.

This red racer dashed into the upper bushes and pretended to be a twig when we spotted spotted him. Except for the fact he was bright red, he would have been convincing

The quarantine has given me little to photograph, so I have been making do with resting insects. They are beautiful, if you can get them to hold still

There is an awesome amount of fur on this critter. The antennae are pretty cool as well

My family and I were tracking a muskrat in the evening dog walk and were sure the eye shine from this frog was it. Fooled by amphibians. The small ear behind the eyes show it is a female, a large one.

Tadpoles!

My most favorite animals are tadpoles. I love them because they are the craziest critters. Going from fish-like to frog-like is a heck of a feat. I don' think the future is bright for the guys who were laid in the scuzzy ditch, there are are just too many things that want to feed on them right now. 

I saw a nesting hummingbird chase of a scarlet tanager from the bird watering table. I can't see the three tadpole I put in there to control the algae, either they got predated, or they are very good at camouflage. I did notice elm seeds sprouting in the water, though.

This moth looks a little banged up, note the bald spot over the shoulder

The summer amphibian season has started.

This little tough guy reminds me of the cartoon pop-eye with his big arms. He is barely bigger than a full stop at the end of a sentence, but always manages to look bigger.

Weirdly, the mosquito fish seemed to be breeding right alongside the tadpoles. I found some tiny fry in with the netted specimens I found. Thefish pretty much looked like 2 eyes and a backbone inside clear jelly, but they were definitely fish like. The tadpoles have doubled in size in just one day, and are a lot more tadpole like than, say, a comma. I saw a predatory diving beetle resting near the ones in the ditch. It is a common predator of these young.

This is an action shot of a fast moving darkling beetle. La Entrada seems to have very large bug specimens and this guy was not stopping for anybody. Normally they stop and point their stinky rear end in the end if you tap near their snout, but this one was on a mission. I have found the young of this species clustered under leaves in the bosque. The adults are most noticeable up in the sandy desert.

this delicate creature spend it's childhood as the fearsome ant-lion larva, ploughing through loose ground and snatching ants in clever traps. Looks rather dainty here. Unlike the damselflies on the ditch, the wings are not folded up, or spread out like the dragonflies.

An impressive variety of spiders tonight coincided with a decreased in the giant cutworm moths. There was a large number and variety of smaller flying insects like midges and mosquitoes. The bottom spider of this trio is identified by the computer as a false widow. Not so scary in person, I think.