deep

The wildlife on the bosque continues to impress, most of it is pretty cryptic; you kind of need to know what you're looking for. A lot of the rest is kind of scary if you do not know what you are looking at. 

take this snake. It's hunting tadpoles and baby frogs, even if you could get it to bite you it would be less unpleasant than a bee sting. Bull snakes eat these snakes. Coachwhips eat lizards. Rattlesnakes eat chipmunks in the rocks of the hot desert. Hognose also eat toadlets in the willows.

Right now the crickets are larger than the new frogs and the crickets are also more likely to eat the new amphibians. The food web turns upside down in a few months as the frogs continue to grow rapidly, especially those bullfrogs.

sometimes the praying mantis are able to feed on a hapless hummingbird, but usually not. When they are this young, they are a tempting snack for most predators.

the recent short rains brought out a bunch of these wicked looking dobsonflies. The males have these long pincer jaws.

I have quite a soft spot for these bagworm caterpillars, they are growing rapidly in the tall trees overhead.

here is one of the first I have seen outside of their sleeping bag made up of chewed leaves and silk.

the entrance is silk lined and eventually becomes a flap that can be closed.

the moths are out during the day. Here is a good example of how they can blend into leaf litter.

everyone is watching for Asian hornets, AKA murder hornets. Right now there are a lot of normal hornets, wasps, and bees about.

I think this is a European hornet, it was brought in for identification. Not a murder hornet.

This velvet ant is a wasp, but doesn't act like one.

mud in the high desert is very fine clay, with almost no organic material. The high heat and UV means the water is pretty free of bacteria.

mud in the Scuzzy ditch is...complex. here the snotweed is dried into suffocating mats that prevent the cattail stumps from regrowing. Moisture trapped under mats supports a huge microscopic ecosystem.

after brief rains, desert inkcaps burst out within a couple of days They usually are found near buildings on sandy ground.

An impressive looking cottonwood stag beetle. Many insects pop out of the ground after a short lifetime underground, of which the cicadas are perhaps the most famous.