travel

 

Some of our feathered visitors are pretty beautiful. Not always co-operative however. It took a while to figure out why this bird would not hold still.

This summer tanager is preening its feathers using an oil gland found at the base of the tail. It rubs the oil onto its beak and spreads it along the feather barbules. The feathers have tiny branches that mesh together perfectly to control temperature, reduce wind resistance and keep out water. For birds, preening is vital to their survival, and they also need roosting trees to be able to have time to do this.

Humans have an ambivalent relationship to trees. We like them, in parks and such, but not when they grow and bring down our power lines. The old ones are easy to manage, but ask two people about how they feel about trees, you will have three opinions.

 

Baby birds are growing fast now, and many of the biggest, like this horned owl baby, need trees for protection while they learn what is what in the world. This murder floof looks just like a muppet to me.

Three birds to fledge is a lot for a great horned owl family. These guys are going to have to grow up fast and learn to hunt to take the pressure of the parents. But for know they can just look pretty for the many pictures taken of them.

This squirrel also finds old trees to be an awesome place to raise babies, but it is unlikely those youngsters will ever come out during the day, with all the cats that are around.

Animals with nests on the ground run the risk of being raided. Skunks are pretty notorious around hen houses for this. This poor shot shows a very large skunk raiding what is likely a snapping turtle nest dug into the side of a ditch. Skunks are actually very shy and run away as soon as people and their dogs are smelled or heard, their eyesight is notoriously poor. I took this picture at very long zoom, but he still heard my dogs.

Fallen trees are also perfect basking spots for baby snapping turtles; if they are in the center of a pond with good sunlight and deep water with reeds for hiding in.

There are birds in the bosque all the time, of course. But most people do not notice how the types of birds keep changing. This tyrant flycatcher is going to become a dominant species during the summer. They are notorious for defending their nests from anything else.

This is a fish eating bird, a neotropical comorant. It does not have waterproof feathers, so has to dry the feathers out in the sun before it will fly any distance. They have small wings and weak flight muscles. The chest of this bird looks less like the huge bodybuilder (like a dove) and more like the bottom of a row boat because they are great swimmers with strong leg muscles. In this picture you can see the hook at the end of the beak for holding slippery fish. The part of the leg you can see is actually the toes and ankles. The knee is up inside all the feathers.

While most birds have babies, these goslings get the most "Awwh!" factor. In spite of the mother's attention, many of the goslings will be unlucky in life. There was likely seven goslings or so in the clutch, now there are three left.

People still have trouble wrapping their heads around the fact that many ducks roost in trees in the bosque. These aptly named wood ducks definitely can nest in them, but they need old growth forest with lots of room.

This strange daisy is known as "Sneeze-weed" and "bitterweed" a type of daisy. I see the insects have attacked this plant relentlessly, so it can't be that bad.

Another daisy species, similar and also very different. These are known as least daisies.

These globe mallows pop up as soon as there is water. They are still hopeful, however the temps are climbing and barely a cloud in the sky.

I have never seen the flowers of the Russian olive before now, but I can see why the tree is also called the silver berry.

The best flowers are not the big, showy ones, The best are tucked away in tiny crevices of life, microcosms that few people will ever look at. These beard-tongues are cultivated for use by gardeners, they are one of the largest native plant genus in north America.

These are Opuntia, commonly called prickly pears, or nopal if you are using it in a recipe. There are 117 species and they are loving the hot dry weather we have now. The young pads are sprouting flower buds and new areoles (where the spine are)

There is enough room in Corrales for an endless array of plants, from cactus, to grass, (even raspberries) if you know the rules of irrigation.

The variety of beetles is getting wider as the nights get hotter. This is a false blister beetle. The two color tones makes many predators nervous about eating it.

The darkling beetles have been growing up in the leaf litter of the bosque, and will make their way up into the sandy desert dunes as they get older.

This beefy beetle is very similar looking but is a desert stink beetle. They may be closely related, I don't know. Black beetles all look very similar.

This is a solitary wasp I found in some sand dunes. It likely had just hatched

This jumping spider has a lot of personality. Those two huge eyes in the front show this spider hunts using stereoscopic sight, just as we would. Even though they are different sizes, this spider still has eight eyes.

This is a species of click beetle. It chews tunnels in old wood and lays eggs there. When startled, some can hold their second segment against their third and release it with a loud click, the sound can scare predators, and the recoil can throw the beetle out of danger.

This mayfly nymph exoskeleton was shed as the larva crawled out of the water and up to a spot to dry out and fly away. These casts can be around for several years as not many things can digest chitin.

The damselfies are mating all along the ditch edges. forming a pair of flying insects.

There are many dragonflies around as well, eating gnats like crazy.

Ants swarm whenever the weather plans to change. This group has gathered above ground for some unknown reason. There are no winged drones in the group like there was earlier in the year when they where forming new colonies

This caterpillar will become a leaf beetle and there are often many of them on a single plant. this one shows the classic six legs on an insect, and then a whole bunch of other "proto-feet"

In the flatlands of the bosque, we do not have to worry to much about vertical geography, erosion is constant however, and these hoodoos show the effects of wind and weather on sand. The lichen provides a semi-impermeable skin that resists erosion, where stones fall out, the hole quickly enarges by wind action to create these fantastic structures.

 

 Any rock overlying the sandstone will prevent erosion below it and create some pretty otherworldly structures. These are the goblin colony hoodoos in the Jemez mountains.

Most people have seen frogs and toads, but it isn't easy to tell the difference, especially now. This toad is lumpy and a poor swimmer, but needs to be in the water to find a mate and lay egg tubes, anchored in place around plant stems.

 

 This smooth skinned bullfrog is much more comfortable in water and is defending a sunny patch of real estate.

 

I was surprised how many crayfish are out there already, even with the water temperatures this low. They are remarkably adaptable creatures that can survive almost anywhere.

It is a fact that if you have a lot to say, you are going to get misunderstood a lot. Here is a snapping turtle (on the left) digging through the algae substrate to get to the rich black mud below to hide from me. This water is absolutely crystal clear above the gunky black slime. This water is also loaded in nitrates from farming and effluent. It is not, however, "dirty". Bacteria loads can be high, but they have digested the "solid poop" so the water is not cloudy. The nitrates they leave behind is through the roof, however. If you bubble air through it, the proteins form a thick lather quickly.

This is a complex issue, but basically, where there are lots of trees and standing water (wetlands), and  very little cropland, there is less nitrate in the water. The link to the USGS in the last sentence explains this much better than I can. Study the map, the Rio Grande valley is a local hot spot for nitrates. But we are not living in our own poop in any definite way.