disturbance

Spotting wildlife in New Mexico can be difficult. Most wildlife keep their distance from people, especially the birds. Sometimes you can be lucky

like in this scruffy juvenile Coopers hawk that has decided to use our fence for a hunting perch. Early in the morning and 

Sometimes the issue is just that people are not looking. Many of our insects are worth a second to look at again, up closer.

This fierce, big jawed guy is called a California warrior beetle.

Many times, animals are more noticeable when they are "disturbed" or "not in tune" with their environment. For example, that Coopers hawk above is a juvenile and just moved into the neighborhood, he is hunting low to the ground. Unlike the older birds who perch high up to pick off passing doves, this one is hunting lizards and small rodents, likely not successfully, which is why he is still hunting later in the day when the others have roosted.

This school of catfish have likely only just been introduced into the Scuzzy ditch. They are still instinctively schooling as protection against bass and fishing birds, until they disperse into the shallows and cattails to grow into big predators. Their have a distinctive feeding style early in the morning and their barbels ripple along the surface very differently than the less coordinated ripples of the mosquito fish. They are pretty lucky that right now there are few fishing birds in the area.

This nesting female is digging backwards into the gravel of a driveway, using her tail, long toes and leg muscles to open up a tunnel that carpenters ants had started. Many animals adapt human structures to their own ends if they can. Often the location is less than ideal, opening up confrontations with gardeners, if you are a pocket gopher, say.

This say's phoebe is re purposing a lot of human debris as nesting material.

Often humans do not work well with nature, and sometime animals sighting can be a symptom of an underlying issue.

In these two pictures, you can see a typical construction site on the mesa. The big earth movers are obvious. The picture on the right is a action shot of a less obvious coyote running along a shallow arroyo just below the site. Coyotes try to avoid activity during the day, and this was a mated pair who had been attracted to the area following grazing jackrabbits and cottontails.

The prey was attracted in turn by irrigated landscaping around existing buildings at Rio Rancho city center. 

Its likely the coyotes were trying to establish a den in the area. However, the earth mover noise, smell, and alarming activity likely forced them to move on and abandon their homeowner plans. in the middle of the day.