food

This Cooper's hawk was watching ducks in the clear ditch. It is fully capable of catching a smaller one. It was great watching it get so excited when a duck would fly out. As long as the ducks are quick and are near the water, this bird will not risk getting it's flight feathers ruined by water. I have watched many close encounters between these two old enemies.

Biologists seem to be developing a better appreciation of the interconnections of things. Even though tumbleweeds are a horrible invasive species, they do have a benefit to native wildlife that adapts to their use. Tumbleweeds are spread by the wind. As they roll, they open their seed pods and scatter the tiny seeds around. In this picture you can just about make out the open pod casings. This food is used by many small birds over the winter, usually by picking off the seeds individually off the ground.

This plant is an aster of some kind. Its seed pods are much harder for me to understand, but they are pretty.

this grass should be a good source of food, but the seeds seem to be mostly ignored by the birds. But there are many seed eating specialists that have not moved into the Bosque this year yet.

these cockle burrs are famous for being spread in the fur of dogs, even though the smaller grass seeds (foxtails) seem to be worse for causing problems with fur matting and skin issues according to the vets.

here is another grass species, maybe a rye? I have no idea. This alternating pattern of seeds going along the length of a stem is talked about a lot in basic biology courses.

Grass is an amazing plant species, and is far more than just the closely controlled and cropped green stuff people work hard to grow in this dry thin climate. Most lawn grass is actually a marshy plant trying to grow on sand. Of course, to appreciate it you really have to get down into the weeds, so to speak.

In the summer, red eared sliders are everywhere, and are not that amazing. They are pets that someone released into the wild, like goldfish (those should be appearing soon). The first spring turtle, however, is always special. Turtles are amazing creatures with insane adaptations, from inside out shoulders to a secondary set of "lungs in their bungs". The quick youngsters are carnivorous, while the older, more sedate ones settle down to a diet of green, leafy, algae. This individual is partly hiding his "red ears" behind a skin fold, so I spent about an hour trying to get a good photograph of his head. Luckily, this guy is older and appeared quite used to the shenanigans of a Corrales bustle of cars, dogs, and photographers. The scuzzy ditch is a lot busier than most people would realize.