jumping

 Nesting season is continuing for the birds and fish. The insects are changing as well. The plants have changed from flowering focused to fruiting. Everything is changing drastically.

I know this is a caterpillar of the mourning cloak butterfly but I don't know if it is making a chrysalis or not. It has been in this classic position for several days.

The nightly visits from the horned owls have stopped, but they left a parting gift. This is the fur and bones that owls cannot digest after swallowing prey whole. They regurgitate an "owl pellet". This one has the remains of at least 2 mouse skulls, so came from a pretty sizable bird.

The only crows left in the bosque are those that are nesting. Here is a picture of "5G" one of a family of crows nesting in the local cell phone tower. While they can eat roadkill, these birds have adapted to dumpster diving from Village Pizza. The starchy, vegetable oil diet lives them very shiny feathers.

There are many flowers out right now and many of them look very similar. This is not actually a dandelion, but is a salsify species. The plants use the same pollinators and are related in that they are all in the aster family.

Asters are ray flowers and also include sunflowers, but there are 32,000 species in this family. This flower color is also common where bees are the most likely pollinator. It is a chicory species.

This flower is red clover, a plant in the legume family that has bacteria "infecting" its roots.  This plant can then produce its own fertilizer and grow in nutrient depleted areas, like shady sand bars. Where there is abundant fertilizer, such as human and dog waste, these plants can't compete with the faster growing kochia and tumbleweed species. Where the two plant co-exist, the clover is found in the shady areas because it is less dependent on the full sunlight to grow super fast.

It is odd how similar unrelated insects can look. This is the larva of a ladybug. The yellow or red spots serve to let predators know the species has a bad taste. They feed on the abundant aphids in the elm tree canopies.

There is a high level of infestation of cottonwood leaf beetle this year. Every year something is in ascendancy, and this year it is these insects that look remarkably like those ladybug larvae. As can be seen, they are vegetarian instead of predators. The vast numbers temporarily overwhelm predators, diseases and parasites that eat them, and allow these defenseless insects a chance to propagate the next generation before everything is back in balance again.

 

These are the molts of the cottonwood leaf beetle. Near the Biopark these insects have crawled to a high spot in their thousands and molt into adults that can fly and migrate out. On commercial tree farms, the beetles destroy the delicate terminal buds and produce trees that are less marketable because the most desired trees are single poles with one "leader" and no forked ends.

This is not the leaf, but the fruit of the touristplant, also known as a spectacle pod. Not a very common plant in the bosque, it seems to be found in open areas. It is a member of the mustard plant family and appears to have a few medicinal uses.

The antlions have left their subterranean lairs and are now flying pollen eaters. They used to be subterranean ogres with oversized teeth that trapped and ate ants in special cone shaped sand traps. Now they look more like rainbow colored fairies.

These next two birds are similar and closely related, but live very different lives. This is a cattle egret that likes amphibians and insects. They often are found around grazing cattle and horses in pasture and snap up insects like grasshoppers that are disturbed by the large animal's movements. Notice the yellow bill and black eyeliner.

This egret is a great snowy egret. It has a black bill with yellow eyeliner and prefers slow-moving water with small fish and crayfish. It has bright yellow feet (not seen) as well as 2 long feathers behind it's head in a crest.

This mother mallard likely produced 5-7 chicks and only had 2 left. When spooked, the mom cannot fly away without abandoning the chicks, so she guides them to spot of tall grass and they all hide together. The mom stands out easily, but even after looking with binoculars for five minutes, I could not see the ducklings even though I knew where they had hidden

Summer is when many exotic species of plant grow and try to gain a beachhead in a crowded living space. Often the plants cannot survive a full year to reproduce. While this is a common plant called smartweed in North America, this is the first time I have seen it in Corrales. Probably the seeds came in on rented channel dredging equipment used to deepen the Clear ditch.

It is hard to know what sometimes led up to a picture. What I do know is that this is paper bedding material sold in pet stores for hamsters and mice. It does not appear to be discarded waste, as it is clean, but not new. Hopefully this is not the site of another abandoned and released pet. The ditches have many goldfish and red eared sliders in residence.

The mulberry fruits are falling from the trees and have attracted the feral turkeys and squirrels to people's yards. These fruits are from a currant bush which are native and often found at the southern end of Corrales preserve. I suspect these are feral from a person's yard, though.

I'm not sure what caused this damage to a young cottonwood, but I am guessing it is an example of leaf damage from the cottonwood leaf beetle. There are many young cottonwoods growing in the thick bands of coyote willow along the edges of the river. This is the terminal bud, which the tree uses to grow taller. This is important for trees, as they have a limited window to grow above the willow and improve their sugar stores. When the terminal is damaged, several new ones form and the tree takes on a more bushy shape.

This is a small jumping spider. These spiders are entirely reliant on being out during the daytime and using their many large eyes to explore. This gives them very human like traits and they are very relatable as they spin and bounce around. Incredibly engaging, they are very liked on tictok as pets for small apartments.

This is the silk lined nest of the common Carolina wolf spider. A large and imposing spider species that is difficult to photograph due to their incredible shyness and speed. Luckily, this one was also extremely hungry, and came out in response to some light tapping of the alarm threads spread around the lair.

At the entrance, this spider looks around. Those large "boxing gloves" appear very menacing. This spider is likely a male. Those long legs fold up very well for such a big creature. The whole scene looks like a character from the "Predator" movies.

The spider is incredibly fast, often vanishing without me being able to see it move at all. I was able to get this blurry picture of the spider's full spread. The shutter speed of the camera is 1/60 of a second. The spider had moved 2 mm in that period of time...guesstimate this spider is moving almost 5 inches a second.

In contrast to that "Predator" looking character earlier, this insect looks more like a scene from "Aliens". This is a juvenile wheel bug, a type of an assassin bug feeding on elm seed bugs. This insect has adopted the lifestyle of a spider and pierces and liquefies its prey with a needle like beak. When grown it has a prominent "wheel " on it's back and will be large enough to give a sharp "sting" if handled carelessly.