Meal

 Everything in the natural world seems to serve a purpose for something else. Right now there are many insects and animals dying as their natural cycles have dictated. The clean up crews are hard at work dealing with the mess as they get ready to usher in the change of shift for the fall and winter months.

 

In the bosque and out on the mesa we have a large number of black beetles. What is not often appreciated is that there are many different types with different roles. This picture is of a Carambid, or ground beetle. This is not a typical darkling beetle, but a caterpillar hunter and an insect eater. A beetle has three parts; head, thorax, abdomen. The tapering thorax (giving it a narrow "waist" and "neck") is very different than the darkling beetles, which have no waist.

This picture gives a better view of the large mandibles. Right now many flying insects are migrating from high elevation forage sites to valley nesting sites. The colder nights and traveling stresses will kill many, while others just wear out after completing their life cycle. These large ground beetles clean up the carcasses as their complete their own cycles. This scene plays out under bright lights from large industrial buildings every evening for the next month or so. Ants take care of the morsels, nothing will go to waste.

The bumble bees come in many species. I have found Sonoran (rare) and American bumblebees in Corrales. They thrive on many flowers, but seem to prefer nightshade early in the summer and then the sunflowers as fall approaches. The males are often found hiding in the flowers and on the stems in the early morning.

New Mexico nights are cold. At high elevation the thin, dry air does not hold heat well, giving a wide difference in temperature from day to night. Lizards are specialists in regulating their temperature by moving from sun to shade. These young whiptails are learning these skills so can often be picked up in the early morning as they begin to move around. They are also found in gardens with short grass because there is not enough cover for them to hide under. They don't have enough skill or stamina to avoid people, or their domestic pets.

A different lizard, with different skills, is the fence lizard. These guys are climbing specialists and use the stucco walls to absorb heat. This allows them to be more active in the late evening. Their higher elevation allows them to survey for dangers. This is one reason why they have more mobile necks and bigger eyes. They also seem to have more complex behaviors, especially courtship.

While gopher snakes can grow up to six feet long and scare the hell out of people, they start out in life as tiny , mellow guys the length of your hand. The long head and distinctive hexagons with side bars down the back (plus no rattle tail) are clues that these colubrids are safe. They also rarely coil up. This one was pretty interested in me as well. I don't pick up snakes for the same reason I don't eat wild mushrooms; I could be wrong.

This is a truly odd creature that gets very little attention. Unchanged over 200 million years, it is sold as a children's plaything for budding biologists in small packets through the mail. The eggs are carried on car tires in mud all around Bernalillo for sure. It can only live in pools that dry out every year (vernal pools) and will become more common as the climate warms. We actually know very little about their role in the environment, they do not get studied much. Many people do not know that cars create their own ecosystems, that parking lots in the desert are often ideal for some organisms to live around (lethal for others), or that an antioxidant in car tire dust removes oxygen from water and kills fish.

Cool nights and spiders webs seem to be connected. The dew settles on the long protein filaments and the gold, slanting light of the late daybreak catches our humans eyes very well. However, most bigger spiders we see are wolf, or hunting spiders, and they do not use webs to catch prey. While not quite up to the size of a tarantula, they can be pretty large and are often found in the evening in tall grasses, which in my opinion, is the only type of grass that is acceptable.

We are having a larger than usual number of unusual moth species attracted to our house lights. Most are not a typical moth color.

Most are often not a typical moth shape. Notice the long nose and antennae of this snout moth species.

 

 Many moths now are also much larger than we have seen recently. This lined sphinx moth AKA hummingbird moth, is eye catching because of its size. But it is also beautiful in it's own right.

The sunflowers, which used to be found in isolated stands, are now marching forth in a huge (and growing) armies of green leaves and yellow crowns. Most came into the bosque from birdseed. Humans have about 70 species of cultivated sunflowers. It gets...complicated when trying to figure out how many "species" there are. Plants seem to treat the idea of differentiation as a suggestion rather than a rule. Oaks and ferns get pretty problematic.
 

This large moth is a new one to me. Helicoverpa species. A serious agricultural pest of cotton and corn.

Most plants are a host to one or two specialist insects and then a whole host of generalist ones. The pygmy blues are definitely found in large numbers on succulents such as Purslane (confusingly also called pigweed, like the amaranthus species)

Closely related, but a different species is this typical blue species. Difficult to see in a cloud of tiny butterflies, I was lucky to see this one holding still and by itself.

                                           The levels of the water in the ditches depend on many factors, but is ultimately controlled by people irrigating. Right now the decision is to save the run-off from upstream behind dams because of the drought. The drier soil has no water to drain, so the ditches are empty all the way to the river now, with only a few isolated pools holding out.                                         

Like everything in Biology, this will lead to winners and losers. Many invasive species are adapted to humans and their love of permanent water sources. Lots of desert species may actually survive better with less pressure on their populations. There is likely going to be fewer bullfrog and crayfish next year and the scarce leopard frogs in this area might stand a chance of rebounding.

What water exists is too small for the large numbers of big fish that are stocked. The oxygen is depleted, and while food is plentiful, the bodies are piling up near to the popular fishing holes as the high heat and low oxygen kill even these hardy channel catfish.

Carp are usually a good fish for keeping down vegetation in man-made channels. These powerful fish are currently fighting hard to keep the pools deep by flinging out the mud. This is attracting the attentions of fish eating birds, but most are not able to handle a fish this big.

The concrete around this irrigation outlet has created an overhang that allows the fish to live longer and stay cooler, but as the bacterial count increases, the oxygen drops more and they eventually all suffocate. The fishermen all migrate to the polls at carrie tingley that are maintained by huge, energy hungry pumps and permanent staff. The smell is pretty eye watering. So far only the flies are interested in the bounty laid before them.

 

The smallest fish will last the longest, which is what this heron is watching for at the few pools that remain. That long beak is perfect for slow fish in muddy conditions.
 

 

 We have started seeing the migrations of Canada geese coming into the bosque. They actually prefer to feed on the short grasses found in the field sports around Rio Rancho. The low river levels do not offer a flock of geese any protection from the prowling coyotes, so they stick together and use their many eyes and ears to avoid trouble. It should still be a month before the sandhill cranes begin to arrive.