warm

there are several things roadrunners are famous for, depending on your interests. They race coyotes (fake news; coyotes are faster, ACME doesn't exist-ish). Coyotes do eat them, usually from an ambush They also like to eat lizards, and they have a patch of bare skin at the base of their neck that they raise to warm up in the early mornings. This picture actually shows all of this, if you look closely you can see the rumpled feather look as this road runner uses skin muscles to lift the flap of flight feathers and down feathers beneath, to expose the bare skin to the sun's rays.

The reason he is in Corrales and not in the high desert is that this (brief) warm weather has brought out the young and dumb lizards early. These "young-of-year (YOY) lizards have not learnt yet that it is not spring and they are out hunting insects. They are slow from the cold, and do not know that roadrunners are looking for them. The sky today showed that a cold front is coming. The young lizards also don't subscribe to the weather channel.

this morning on the river many birds were feeding together. I suspect many are planning to soon fly North and need to fuel up. The weather usually brings many changes for the birds

this duck looks like a female mallard, but is too small. Also, the beak is much longer and square tipped. This lady is some sort of shoveller duck, likely she won't be staying here long if there are not other shoveller ducks around.

these young Asiatic clams are water filter feeders and likely highly sought after by just about any bird that puts a beak into the water. It can be hard to believe that Corrales is a food bonanza for birds while every plant looks brown and dead. But the signs are there if you look.

this green stemmed plant is a Baccharis it is full of terpenes and is not edible by cattle or rabbits. However, many moth caterpillars feed on it, to the benefit of many birds and reptiles.

this plant is called winterfat. It is used by sheep and other browsers during the winter when there is little else available.

this is one of my favorite plants. The four-wing saltbush.The female plants (yes, these plants are gendered) have seeds with four little wings sticking out. I used to harvest these and eat the little salty seeds. A lot like sunflower seeds, but they take a lot more work to husk.

last summer had many sunflowers grow. These heads look empty now, but occasionally you can find a seed inside that the birds missed.

there are still many of these illinios bundleflower seeds around. Apparently they are highly nutritious, but nothing in this area is trying to eat them, so I would stay away.