Digging

 

A digger wasp on a grass seed head.

I usually see sandpipers during the summer day, walking around puddles looking for small tadpoles. Its kind of unusual to see one at night. Night photography involves a lot of specialized equipment to make it look "natural". 

While I was doing this I could hear sandhill cranes in a nearby field, they haven't learnt to avoid coyote attacks by roosting on the open river. They fly in to New Mexico at night so, like this sandpiper, must have just arrived to this neck of the woods along with the cold weather.

the only pictures of the big migrants so far are flocks of canada geese.

these June bugs sure look dead. The cold snap dropped them out of the trees they were in. But in the hand they quick warm up and start moving....then they get scared and play dead until left alone. Notice the white hairs along the back legs for collecting pollen?

Another hidden inhabitant from the now dry ditch is this river mussel. A lot of them are endangered and they can be hard to identify at the best of times.