sunset

 Most people who want to live in a village have visions of fields covered in flowers, with cute wild animals gamboling, and butterflies dancing in the meadows. Corrales actually does have most of that too. However, there is also a lot more going on that is never noticed. Thankfully, no one lives in a boring, predictable Disney movie, so reality is out there for those who might want to see.

The weeds in a monsoon summer of New Mexico grow wild and thick along the banks and in the fallow farmers fields. Amaranth, goats head, bindweed, and many types of grasses compete for real estate in the hot sun. While these plants can be cut back, they do not stay gone for long.

Tall weeds above waist height conceal many animals in their cool, humid shade. The young toads and lizards are rapidly spreading out from where they were born as they look for space, and insects.

Several insects use plant juices and secretions to produce a coat of stiff foam for protection from the environment and predators. This is termed cuckoo's spit by hikers and usually hides frog hoppers.

Other insects use stiff hairs and tight groups to ward off problems. I think these are the larvae of calligraphy beetles. They look very different than the pretty adults.

Common lore says the bird song stops the day after the first full moon in August. I'm a little skeptical about this, but I keep an open mind. This male grosbeak is part of a pair that has only just now hatched it's first chicks.

 

Common lore also says spadefoots are active for only 2 weeks of the year in the desert. That certainly wasn't true for this year. No one really knows why they come out of the earth to breed. The temperature has to be >60 at night, no wind, dampness in the air, with open water ponds not more than 1 week old. Some think they smell algae, hear the sound of rain, or the "feel" of lightning. Personally, I believe theyfew  move about when the insects that live in their holes get flushed out by floods and raise a hubbub that other insects pick up. It's just far more noticeable at certain times of the year to those humans that are up at midnight out in the open desert...

A great many spade foot tadpoles have been washed into the new Harvey Jones channel from the sandy soil of the Bajada slopes. They have been trans-located from desert to bosque. Not sure what happens to them, but they do not survive in the woods, too many predators and perils.

Around my house are a great many of these underwing moths, they are pretty large and their caterpillars feed on willows and cottonwoods. When disturbed, they flash red/pink underwings in a dazzle display before flying off erratically. They usually have vanished by October.

Many things die in the bosque, snapping turtles, cicada wasps, and raccoons are often found along trails. Really not sure what happened to this rabbit, it appears partly digested and swallowed partly whole. All the large carnivores could have done this, but my money is on a large cat.

 

 On Loma Larga there are many instances of this interesting plant. A field dodder is parasitic and flings up roots to snag the stems of roadside weeds. It is studied by biologists who try to unravel how it detects appropriate plants nearby. The patches look like dried straw thrown out the side of a farm truck.

There are many evening primroses along the ditch banks right now. Aa very pretty flower that unlike most botanical medical claims, actually seems to have some science behind it's use by people. The caveat, of course, is that if it worked as well as reported, the whole world would be taking it... Confusingly, primroses and evening primroses are not related. Also there are 650 different evening primrose species alone. Botanists must be nuts, seriously.

This beetle is sucking the juice from a sunflowers, these aster type plants are a lot more juicy than they look at first glance. The flowers support a very diverse number of animals. This is a type of blister beetle called Zonitas bilineata and is not as dangerous as that family name would suggest. Humans love names that categorize something as scary, but the hype rarely lives up to the reality. (But not never).

After the rains comes the fungus. There is a whole world of mold, fungus, and amoeba that is unsubscribed in science. It is an uncomfortable fact that fungus might be a much closer relation to us than to plants. This mass of white threads is actually what fungus looks like. The mushroom part is just a fruiting body designed for reproduction. we no so little about these creatures, simply because they look boring.

Wasps are not boring and are a huge family. Sadly, most people only know the paper wasp that is literally co-evolving to survive with humans. They are practically domesticated at this point, wasp spray notwithstanding. This handsome wasp is serendipitously showing the two spots that give it it's common name; two spotted Scoliid wasp (The scientific name translates as "doubtful", repeated twice Scolia dubia dubia). This insect is far more common east of the Mississippi. They are parasites of scarab beetles just like in the movie "Alien."

Flowers like those on these kochia weeds are not noticeable, but the ragweed pollen they produce will very soon be. With enough exposure, most people will eventually exhibit "seasonal allergies" this summer.

Weeds like kochia, and other amaranths are going to produce a bumper crop of tiny butterflies this fall, like this pygmy blue, as well as skippers.

In spite of earlier concerns, this irrigation season has not been the worst. Here is the outflow of the "middle ditch" where it flows from Cabezon into the clear ditch. The sediment load is impressively heavy from the fast moving water and I often wonder where it is being moved from. This chocolate color is usually caused by clay being removed just below a dam as the river carves a new logarithmic profile according to the rules of gravity.

'It is not those who can inflict the most but those who can endure the most who will conquer" Terence MacSwiney Irish Patriot, Mayor of Cork.

The cottonwood trees of the bosque are impressive for the amount of suffering they can endure and even thrive. They are susceptible to so many parasites, like this popular petiole gall aphid. These aphids live in woody hosts in the winter and plants like London rocket in the summer. Cottonwood trees form protective galls with all sorts of different insect infestations, and also host slime bacteria and fungi. Yet they persist, while the American chestnut is functionally extinct because of two quick fungal blooms (ink disease and chestnut blight) that occurred 120 years ago. Cottonwoods, in some form, will endure.

Tamarisk trees are invasive, but that means nothing to this figeater beetle that is feeding on the pollen and nectar of those minute flowers, along with hosts of other insects and critters. The endangered willow flycatcher needs these trees to reproduce, so where is the tipping point from invasive to beneficial?

This fascinating creature is a fall webworm, a spiny moth caterpillar inside a sack made of threads where it is safe from predators. It actually does little harm to trees but is considered unsightly because of the sack the community makes around some leaves and thus marked for our ire. It is native to North America, but has spread around the world just since the 1940's.

Beauty is a strange thing. The most spectacular sun sets are created from particles from pollution or dirt in the atmosphere. The delicate and beneficial pink flowers of a tamarisk tree are overlooked because the species is considered some sort of foreign devil. Imperfections from invaders, like insects or mistletoe, on a cottonwood could mark it for removal. Wasps are all labelled as vicious, fungus is overlooked for dull. Toads, parasites, and caterpillars are labelled ugly by definition. Nothing labelled a weed can be appreciated without the threat of a gardener's excommunication. Maybe we do live in a Disney movie of dancing fawns and people who talk to animals. If so, we would miss true magic that exists at all times of the year, all around us, just outside these windows and screens we peer into for so long.