flow

 Water is very important when it is scarce. In Corrales we manage and "corral" it to flow into the fields. There is a lot about water we do not think about, like where it comes from, how to control it for the benefit of everyone, where it goes, and how it works.

But not all water is the same. This hot spring is from Soda dam, in the Jemez . It is salty, alkaline and hot. There are no frog spawn in this water, but moss and algae has learnt to live in it and there are many specialized creatures that thrive in this unique environment.

Another environment specialist in the Jemez is this fairy tail shrimp. The eggs can desiccate and survive for years in dry puddles until the rains come back and let them hatch again. Why would they do this? Why does an aquatic insect live in the desert? The rare water is actually the reason. There are no predators in the temporary puddles, no fish species, no other insects have time to grow. Prime real estate....if special challenges can be overcome. Just like Corrales, really.

Predators are never far behind, though. Here is a picture of a jumping spider. They do not hunt with webs. Their cousins, wolf spiders, have adapted to hunting puddles for insects underwater. Many spiders in New Mexico can run along the edges of wet clay ponds and snag all sorts of insects.

The ants are also expert hunters/scavengers of the edges of drying puddles. In this picture they are dragging an insect back to the nest to be dismembered. Unlike spiders, they work co-operatively.

 

This rather fearsome nymph will one day grow to become an aphid predator. Many are natural, but they are also released in large numbers by rose gardeners to protect delicate blooms.

 

Ants are some most remarkable animals. They like sugar, they use the aphid to suck plant sugars out of the plant and concentrate it. Then they "milk" the aphids afterwards for the honeydew produced. By protecting the delicate aphids from predators like the ladybugs, the numbers of aphids can explode on tender plant shoots.

I think this is a cicada killer. We will not see the explosion of "Brood X" on this side of the continental US, but there are other less spectacular species. This wasp is a hunter, and is a lot more aware of it's surroundings than most wasps. This one is giving the photographer (me) a threat display.

 

The acequias are filling up again and this changes the way of life of many creatures found in or near the ditches

Many lizards are not used to the water and can be easy to catch. This whiptail is giving a very disapproving glare, but is being held very carefully. If stressed they lost their tails and can suffer increased mortality as a result.

I often wonder how turtles survive, they seem to be so careless with their nests. Turtles lay round eggs and this is egg is likely from a snapping turtle nest that was inundated when the ditches filled.

The yucca is about to bloom. These flowers can also be used as a vegetable and are used not only for pollen, but their juice is sucked by many insects and the seed pods are used by moths for egg chambers too.

Cockroaches are human specialists and never too far from human plumbing and refuse. Apparently this is a Turkish cockroach. Blattaria is their genus name. Describes them very well.

The desert blooms are beginning and most of these flowers are arresting. They have to be to get insects before the moisture vanishes they put out quite a bit of pollen in profusion

The colors and variety can be astonishing, but they are gone far too soon not to be seen for another year.

 

This rose is a more wild, climbing type, and is still good for insects. The more modern flowers have too many petals to be as useful to insects. The open plan flower shape here looks a lot like the cactus flowers shown above, even though these plants are pretty distantly related.

The grapes are growing ferociously and if cultivated for fruit, need to be controlled for the best output. The ones in people's gardens are looking very extravagant. The grapes clusters are looking good.

The ditches in Corrales need constant maintance and are expensive to control. There are many conflicts between interests. Here the digging activities of voles are undermining and collapsing the driving surface above. Neither side wins when disagreements can't be resolved. But how mammals of different stripes get along together is a question with no good answer currently. The answer is likely not to be paving over the scuzzy ditch, though.