rocks

The temperatures in the plains below are a lot warmer than in the 9000 foot mountains, but the winds are strong in March. Also, no animals other than the ubiquitous crows.

The lichen is very vibrant greens. This genus is called cobblestone lichen.

Some species have very fancy names, but only an expert could tell them all apart.

This pale grey lichen is rarer, but for some reason more noticable at a distance. They form much smaller patches in the darker crevices.

This is another type of lichen, a cryptic species that grows on the surface of the thin clay soil.

This is caliche, a type of chalk material that leaches out of rocks and from rain interacting.

The caliche fills in cracks in the rock. The soft material is one of the materials that make up a pretty complicated geography in this ancient lake bed.

One of the visitors at the three rivers petroglyph used the caliche on the trail to leave a temporary memento.

Out in the gypsum and sand dunes, the same material forms part of White Sands National park. Most of the foothills is also government owned.

This bedrock weathers into vertical cracks that widen over time. They also develop a thin desert varnish that allows the petroglyphs to be chipped into the rocks over unknown millennia.

The deep cracks hide many pack rat nests which can grow to pretty large sizes.

The scrubby mesquites and creosotes support many other animal tunnels by stabilizing the delicate soils.

Some animals enlarge the holes of others, a rock roof saves a lot of work.

I can explain some things, and guess at a lot of others, but I have no idea why a packrat decided to poop in this small depression.

Some of the spiky mesquite has been chopped back from the trails, but this plant was nibbled down, and has begun to regrow, just like the beavers down by the Rio Grande, but on a slightly smaller scale.

This is the empty thorax of some sort of desert beetle, the size of a darkling beetle, but red. The edges show clear signs of rodent nibblings.

Inaturalist thinks this is a honeypot ant. I have met them before, but that app is not too good on some insect identifications. The honeypot ants swell their abdomens and turn some of the workers (plerergates) into living barrels to help the nest survive the lean season.

These are definitely rough harvester ants, their nest is characteristically surrounded by gravel and the dried husks of seeds.

This is a nest structure of the creosote midge. It is a gall the fly uses a fungus to change the hormones of plant....hell....just click the link above, it gets more complicated.

These white fluffy capsules are the seed pods of the creosote, greasewood, chaparral, it seems to have fifty other names.

This is not seeds, it's the nest of some kind of scale insect.

This rabbit bush is a distinctive green in summer, but is hard to identify as just another brown bush during the cold months.

The mesquite has some awesome thorns, but the honey locust, like this one, has some slightly more mellow protection

The leaves are in a classic legume pattern, showing that this plant is able to add nitrogen to the soil by a symbiotic relationship to a bacteria that grows in a special pouch in the roots.

This is a packrat nest built over some cracks in the rocks. The rodent picks up anything it can find, usually sticks, but also shows, or any other trash it finds.

Somewhere there is bighorn sheep, depicted on this rock with some arrows in it.

Armadillo with arrow. Most pictograms are less elaborate.

This is a desert rose, formed from gypsum.

This rock shows the caliche layer forming where the mudstone is in contact with the calcium rich clays.

The rock is sedimentary siltstone or mudstone--seems to be a kind of arbitrary distinction. The many inclusions might be remains of fine charcoal from many prairie fires of the eons.

This whole area is mostly protected from private ownership by the military.

This is a view from the mountains out into the plains

A view from the plains back into the mountains, notice all the moisture that will come down in the creeks like the Salado during the hotter months.

This picture shows the rocks flaking, the vanish on the right, and the sedimentary rock with inclusions on the left.

There are over 20, 000 petroglyphs in the area, with many more in the the surrounding hills.

Another armadillo. The ten banded armadillo has been expanding its range back into the area lately.

Another bighorn sheep. Still out there somewhere.