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Corrales is a mysterious place to those who aren't familiar with it. This place is beautiful, with a preserved farmland interface and levees full of ducks. This is what the Japanese would call "Omote" or public. Andrews Lane is an example of this. As is the end of Romero Road. Designed for visitors.

This cultivated flower is some sort of quince. The blooming flowers are very showy right now. The orchards are blooming and getting pollinated for fall fruits.

The fringe of red coloring is the rapid, new growth. These leaves are unblemished right now, before the attacks of the insects that will come. Plants produce jasomate and salicylate acids as natural pest control, but gardeners help with neonicotinoid insecticides, often with unexpected results.

The buds of the cottonwoods are just beginning on some trees. The hormone Auxin seems to control bud development, but different trees control this hormone differently. The cottonwoods are remarkably flexible on propagation , but the weak link is that they need floods to prepare the ground. Which does not happen with the dam at Cochiti. Humans are getting better at living in odd places like a floodplain.

This bird is actually multitasking. Eating elm seeds, eating bugs that are eating elm seeds, protecting territory, hiding from hawks. Busy schedule.

This is a small branch of an apple tree. It has some odd bumps on the new growth that do not seem like buds.

These lumps have a waxy outer layer. I think they are scale insects.

The underside looks nothing like an insect, but I understand that the scale insects do not look or act like insects either.

This seed bug is definitely what an insect should look like. There will be many more of them as the weather warms up.

 

 there are many features of this hawk to make is distinctive . The brown hood with white body. The rounded tail with the long thin wings. A Swainson's hawk

 

This red tailed hawk also has a short tail, but also short wings. The brown head also shows brown body and lighter chest.

 

Even without having other cues, the silhouette of the tail shows that this is a red tailed hawk. The coopers hawk have a long thin tail, the Swainson's had the wing tips hanging past the tail like coat tails.

But from the front the fierce hawk stare is pretty universal. Kind of look a librarian gives to ruffians before they get a loud "Shush"
 

Corrales irrigation includes acequias that flood fields and lead to many different effects compared to sprinklers. Early in the season the surprised invertebrates rise to the water surface where ducks are eagerly waiting for them.

 

After use, the water drains out into the clear ditch. The water on the left has come down from Romero Road. All the nutrients have already been deposited on the way down and the water is clear, sterile. Good for fish, bad for everything else. On the right is the drain that brings the lateral acequia water loaded with sediment into the clear ditch. Here the cattails grow thickly in the shallow, well aerated, and artificially fertilized silt.

The mallards travel around to wherever the location meets all their needs for food, breeding and safety. They are the stereotypical sign of Corrales.

This seems like a raptor's nest, these birds usually build and repair an older platform, but no activity on it yet.

The herons are still around but seem to drop in and out of the bosque on their own schedules. They prefer to be a little secluded lately

That neck is not only good for fast strikes. It is also a good indicator of their moods and alertness. They extend when they have just arrived in a new place, and when there is a possible disturbance nearby.

This bluebird is much more cryptic. From this angle, we can't even see the blue on it's back.

Many creatures live in the bosque, it can be hard to figure out what birds are using any particular hole, bu the experts say the size of the opening is critical to the occupants.

The bewildering species of ants we have in the bosque are making themselves known. Many species form exit holes on the edge of road. This species builds a small cone, usually in areas where the entrance could suffer from flooding. Others are only found on the inside of old logs.

tidy

 The Corrales Bosque region is a very tidy park. While this can often be a bad thing for a nature reserve, we should always remember it takes a community to keep things the way they seem.

The newest migrants in town are moving around and looking for the best areas to explore. They are not like ravens, who can live off roadkill and trash dumps year round. These guys are the delicate, sensitive type.They spread out when in a new territory, but travel in caravans when migrating. They form a sort of spiraling vortex as they assess the territory and figure out navigation. This photo shows off the distinctive white wing stripe and the classic red head of a turkey vulture. Further south there are also black headed vultures and, apparently, yellow headed ones.

 

 

The nuthatches prefer caterpillars, but right now there are many wood boring beetles around.

I think I remember the females give off a scent as they emerge from the larval burrow they have chewed in the softwoods and the males (like this one) mate as soon as she comes out. There was a tyrant flycatcher snatching some, but he apparently missed this one.

This ladderbacked woodpecker is hunting for food, as opposed to the other species which are usually signalling to others in territory disputes. I used to wonder how they could be dumb enough to look for insects in treated telegraph poles, turns out they make the best resonators.

Wood in not only useful to climb, nest in, or burrow in. This scat made literally of sawdust shows where a porcupine spends its time in the bosque when not raiding fruit trees.

This poop pile on the side of a path is in a well known coyote area. Coyotes often mark trails with scat. Those anal glands that give domestic dogs so much trouble are used by the coyotes to discuss gossip with their neighbors as they travel at night.

It's well known that many domestic dogs like to eat poop. Its less appreciated that poop attracts coyotes into urban areas. Coyotes are true omnivores and the scat can be full of beetle wings, juniper berries, grapes, or fur (usually more in the winter). A dog or horse's poop is a rich source of protein for these scavengers. This picture was someone using a grocery bag to leave dog poop on the side of the path as a coyote snack.

The scuzzy ditch is slowly filing up with sediment brought in from ditch bank collapses, and wind borne dust. The cattails appear to have been introduced relatively recently, but are spreading incredibly fast.

The snotweed usually builds up and can cause problems in closed circuit ponds. Luckily, fishermen do not fish in ponds so the filamentous algae is not introduced. The carp can eat this plant material, but usually can't keep up with the growth. The eutrophication from decaying plants prevent fish from thriving, a mecca for amphibians that can breath air (meh, I'm pretty biased)

Turns out, for horse poop there IS a poop fairy (Canis latrans). Ever notice how it persists on well used trails, but is not found in more secluded parts of the bosque?

 

 Poop fills a very important role in nutrient transfer. Dog poop runoff is easily overloads the Rio Grande carrying capacity during the monsoons with fecal coliform bacteria. But vegetarians like this goose poop also help bring nitrogen to the sandy soils along a river during the long periods where there is no flooding.

 

 This white stuff is heron poop, digested fish is a very good source of nitrogen for plants in the mud. Also, the poop helps you see which way the sluggish water is flowing. Right now, the water levels seem to be rising and bringing water into the Scuzzy ditch.

 

 

 This ditch shows the way foraging ducks stir up the silt as they move along the bank. The clear water on the left side is growing water weeds, but the silt stirred up by the ducks will smother the new underwater plants.

 

 The underground portion of the river (Aquifer) is at least as important as the water above the ground. Here, this isolated pool is free of fish, and will likely grow a mature mesocosm of critters in a unique community in time for the water level to rise and the animals to join the backwaters connected to the Rio Grande. This is the Rio Grande equivalent of a Mississippi bayou.

 

No reason for this midge to be included, i just like the rainbow effect of the wings.

 

frogs

People who look deeper into things than most people would are usually considered crazy. This nuance into the commonplace is kind of the point of this blog, so bear with me as we delve into some crazy stuff.

Just for fun, I photographed some "weeds" I had pulled up. This one came up as lettuce, then chicory. I had expected dandelion. Turns out these are all kind of right, if you do a deep dive into taxonomy. It is a chicory in the lettuce family, and it is a dandelion, of sorts....confusing, huh?

This is considered a tansy mustard plant. Pretty spicy and tasty when young. The frondy leaves are kind of distinctive. As are the yellow flowers that come later (actually already around in other areas)

There are many other weedy looking green things that botonist are arguing about on Inaturalist right now (oops), but there is a lot more growing in the protection of those leave piles at the bottom of the acequias right now. Normally they would be underwater, but they have an extra month's reprieve this year because of drought.

This small guy is attracted to growing shoots. But I am still not sure what genus it is.....working on it, leafhopper of some kind. The variety of insects on the side of my house is already growing logarithmically as the weather gets warmer.

There is a sort of satisfaction in looking at 300 ducks at the UNM central duck pond and picking out the one duck not like the others. Kind of a magic trick, but it took months to identify the other common ducks. This guy is a ring necked duck, never seen one before.

The porcupines are still about. This one was sleeping in a stout tree after spending the night snacking on cherry blossoms and bark in a nearby orchard.

The elm seeds have already begun dropping. Soon the numbers will be overwhelming. Often the animals and plants that start procreating first are the most successful (or invasive, depending on a person's sense of timing). The harvester ants will collect a great many of them.

This mourning cloak is one of several in a commonly found in one small area. I couldn't get a shot with the wings open. This is because they rest with wings closed, as a general rule.

Moths require special equipment and diligence to get good pictures, so they are usually the poor cousins to the "pretty" butterflies. Most people have not seen the gorgeous golden hues that just about every moth is colored. As a general rule, moths are night insects and rest with the  wings open

These thin leaves are unfurling after the pear blossoms have already been out. Seems sort of backwards, but most trees are in a hurry right now, as opposed to the lazy days of summer ahead of them.

Usually ants are no big deal, just "pests." This swarm of big headed guys was identified as the common immigrant pavement ant. They are not found in Corrales due to competition from all the other ant species found here.

The Coopers hawk is very well adapted to UNM central campus, with it's tall trees and abundant pigeons. They have a long distinctive banded tail.

The campus even has more than the usual number of rabbits, whose numbers in the bosque seems to be far fewer than usual. Likely from a rabbit pandemic of their own

The Scuzzy ditch is loaded with large bullfrogs right now, silent and nervous so far, but that will change as the nights warm up. The chorus comes after the first of the Wood house toads, but nature continues to surprise.