culture

 A place like Corrales is has such variety it can be bewildering. The different uses the land is put too would seem so mutually exclusive. Some people want big houses, others want small. Some like well kept yards, others like natural. Some want recreational land use for all, others make their living selling and parceling it up. Some farm the land, others want to pave it. Some like privacy, others like strong rules.

The birds in Corrales seem to have the same issues. Right now the hummingbirds are still dive bombing and driving out other birds from nesting sites. These hummingbirds don't even live here year round! Nesting season is just about finished now. The seasons continue to change. Soon we will be seeing ducks and crane and these little napoleons will have returned to warmer, wetter climates.

These apple looking things are actually walnuts. They are still young fruits. There are many nut trees scattered around but few people grow them in orchards. The pecan farms New Mexico is famous for are found further south, where they have a longer growing season.

Apples have a long and complicated history being farmed in the US. The small trees are so over loaded right now many of the branches snap under the weight of their own fruit.

Many farms are growing grapes along their fences, the number of vineyards appear to be going up as well. Corrales has been growing grapes since 1629 but fortunes have been pretty up and down over the years. I am not much of a wine person (but am still on the look-out for a bottle of Casa Rondeña Sangiovese 2007) but this history of commercial wine making appears to have been severed by the great flooding of 1943.

 

Flooding doesn't seem to be the greatest of Corrales concerns this year, but the recent rains has made things difficult for the fragile ditches of the valley and the sandy soils below Intel. Corrales central drain is slowly filling in as more soil washes into the low areas. The ditch sides still collapse slowly as runels carve valleys into the steep sides.

This plant goes by many names like buffalo gourd. They are often found along the roadside of desert roads. They produce big orange flowers  along the ground. You can still see they remains of the flowr on the end of this fruit.

This trumpet vine has the start of the bean containing the seeds beginning to form out of the end of the flower. The process of flowers tunring into fruits is bizarre in the plant world.

Late summer is vine season and there are many plants other than buffalo gourd spreading out among the taller plants. The bindweed here is a little subtle. This flower is a bit unusual and has a 5 pointed star pattern, this is the equivalent of finding a four leaved clover.

This is the more usual configuration of six pointed star shapes in the petals of the flower. I think it will attract the same insects, though.

The colder weather has slwoed down some insects and I was finally able to get a closer picture of a bumblebee feeding on lavender in this picture. There are 49 species of bumblebee in the US and their role is very under appreciated. For example, they pollinate tomatoes and honeybees don't.

Not all symbiotes are quite so benign. This yellow string looking stuff is dodder, a parasite. It appears to prefer the goathead plants right now.

Honeybees appear to love the small yellow flowers of the goatheads, which will be leaving little caltrops all over come the fall. People have begun spreading and burning the green fronds now, but this is pretty much a fool's errand

 

I was kind of surprised to find a 10 lined june bug on this globe mallow plant. I had assumed they just buzzed around for ever, or something, I guess. I have a hard time believing they are also pollinators.

 

I know many amphibians have a closer connection to food webs in the bosque than is generally appreciated. But the actual details are pretty elusive. Still, this young bullfrog is leading the way for another generation that is slowly and surely taking over the Liam Knight pond in the Corrales center.

 

This was a bit of a puzzle. The scat is woodhouse toad poop. There is quite a bit of it along the edges of the middle ditch. This particular area seems to be host for some sort of tachnid fly that was either laying, or emerging from the mounds.

This is clearly domestic dog poop. The owner kicked some dirt over it and hurried away. That is unlikely to keep the flies away, and who knows if it will actually breakdown, or enter our waterways.

As a quick note, this picture is from google and is a reminder that 2 years ago today I began to blog about Corrales and the facinating ecology (including the humans). I am holding up a jar of a very large woodhouse toad. Happy anniversary to me! (I released the toad afterwards and I think it is the same one I found hanging out in this area yesterday)