catfish

While wandering up to the Corrales pool today in the sizzling noon day heat, I saw a large round shadow in the scuzzy ditch and thought it was a large turtle in the water. The ditch has been remarkably clear lately and you can clearly see the large carp and small trout feeding on the bottom in the early morning and evening. However this shadow turned out to be a shoal of small, black, wiggly fish fry of what I think is channel catfish. I remember in the past mistaking single baby catfish for tadpoles. i briefly wondered if these were mosquito fish, but I could also see those guys along the edges of the ditch, and they were camoflaged grey and way more chill. Also they were acting like mosquito fish. This black school was acting like a frenzied bait ball, swirling and wiggling around. I was lucky to see them, because when I came back a 1/2 hour later they were lost in the dense reeds. Catfish are introduced into the ditches by some agency...somehow. I think it's the NM department of game and fish. I usually see them in the morning feeding at the water surface as they get older. These guys were feeding on the algae on the mud bottom, raising small dust clouds in the water column. Unfortunately I did not get a picture.

On a walk along the ditch in the light of the setting sun to Village Pizza for the weekly treat, the dusty ground was covered in lizards lying sideways to the rays to catch the last bit of heat before the cool evening. Day temps are around 100 and night time lows are around 65, quite a wide range. I know the amphibians are out in the evening once the night temps are above 60. There was a few rustling in the grass of snakes I did not see but I have learnt to hear.. the lack of legs rustling I guess. Anyways, it sounds distinctly different. There were lizards everywhere, most sunning, but some were eating large beetle grubs. The tracks in the dust can be hard to see, but their small tail drags are pretty distinctive, especially as the shadows in the late evening from the low sun emphasize the ridges in the ground.

On that section of the scuzzy ditch, the plants have grown very tall in the ideal conditions of farmland run off, high water table and constant sun. The west side has weeds that are dense and about seven feet high. Those thick beds of cat tails and pigweed hide an abundance of insects, random critters and birds

like these red ringed black-birds, that are marsh living specialists. The large grasshoppers have joined the other beetles, dragonflies, butterflies and wasps along the ditch. Grasshopes in general are pretty amazing creatures everyone usually takes for granted. They hide in plants and munch on the tenderest parts. Some like the locust can explode in numbers and change their shape to migrate and fly across the farmlands. But even normally few people realize they are not usually found in grass, and that they can swim, crawl, hop and also fly sometimes.

A similiar looking species, but no that closely related are the katydids that hide among tree leaves and sing in the warm evenings along with the chorus of crickets, and

occasional cicadas.

Another big bug is the clown of the group, the June bugs, these klutzes seen designed for pratfalls, but, up close, they have pretty cute little faces.

These big bugs moving around mean that the toads are out and I have just started seeing them again after a brief early blitz. They suffer from dog attacks, and car crushing but they are pretty resilient critters. A big one like this will be 5-10 years old and given the mortality of tadpoles (>90%) pretty lucky to be alive.

The white stripe on this guy is pretty distinctive, the shape of the poison gland on the neck behind the eyes is more subtle but equally specific. The old guys have a L shaped cranial crest that is only beginning to develop on this one.