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.