rain

  monsoon rains mean a change in almost everything about the high desert. In the bosque, water is not the limiting factor, so life does not change so much

But now, in the puddles left by the rains in the sand and clay of the mesa, a lot of things are changing. The frogs are out at night. The night soundscape is filled with sounds more usually associated with Jurassic Park movies. Chirps, grunts, screams as frogs come out and compete with crickets for the decibels.

The river valley's flash floods from the arroyos have been tamed by dams and channelization, but up in the desert, these short-lived pools (ephemeral) are still the perfect nursery for tadpoles to develop.

The spiders are now going to get bigger. the hunting spiders are out, looking for a big score. This is a more unusual ground crab spider.

The best prey; flies, are ubiquitous around farms and are associated with any place with water and rot. Many pupate into adults from the Corrales commons field by the public pool. However, there are other fly species that also pollinate plants and can sustain a whole food web of their own. This is a young bluebottle. Some of the flesh flies are actually have a pretty nasty bite.

Many insects are chewing their way through early growth stages. These insects are eating tissue and avoiding the central, tough vein tissues. This batch of insects are in a hurry, I suspect they are webworms, but am probably wrong. Monarch caterpillars prefer to eat the vein tissue of milkweed plants first. This stops the toxic plant sap from getting to the leaf edges, reducing the amount of toxins that the caterpillar needs to neutralize by storing in its body tissues.

These holes were probably made by a solitary wasp or bee to build a nest with. It also likely to be flea beetles, however, which are very common right now.

This clover was chewed by a young grasshopper. They are much more mobile in the grass and weeds that abound close to the ground. The adults are just bigger versions of the juveniles, unlike the caterpillars and moths.

The chewed ends of this cultivated grass show how the lawn is kept artificially short by mowing, this limits the number of insects and other predators that would otherwise eat the grasshoppers and leafhoppers. The moisture levels is kept VERY high by constant irrigration. The short stems cannot prevent to water from evaporating.

This ugly guy is likely an early tomato hornworm, of horticultural fame. These villains can strip a plant of all leaves in one night in their later stages. Notice it also avoids the central veins of the leaf. Feeding on a datura plant gives a clue to it's species, as most insects cannot digest the toxins found on these.

This big boi is a species of sphinx moth. Most prefer tobacco and nightshade plants like potato, tomato, nightshades and datura plants to lay their eggs on.