Air

 New Mexico is famous for its wild landscapes and scenery, even as many people fear its wildlife, wildfires and lawlessness. But everything has a balance and concepts such as right and wrong are purely human inventions.

 

 The burns from prior forest fires can still be clearly seen at Romero, as the brooding clouds threaten snow in the background. This area also has scars of its past use as a dump. Also, the scraggly, old trees show the effects of a rising soil overburden, which prevents new seedling from growing, dooming the cottonwood forest. The overall effect is ethereal, beautiful, and also poignant.

The sunsets are also famous, especially as the windy season begins. Pollutants, smoke from other states, and dust collect in the air above the central Rio Grande basin and swirl in basically a giant bowl, creating billowing skies of illusion, filled with imagined smoke and fire.

The Corrales Bosque seems to be a thick growth of trees, but is more like a patchwork of influences and history that can be seen it the plant growth. The plants have been cleared many times for many reason, and they grow back in unique ways. Here, the willows begin to replace bare earth as succession begins again. The patches of snow insulate and water the dirt below it, laying the foundations for the plants that follow.

In the Harvey Jones channel, a pipit begins catching the insects as they emerge from the mud. The soil here is laced with artificial sweetener from the effluent of over one hundred thousand people in Rio Rancho, as well as seeds and organisms brought from other landscape projects far away. The results are wild, and unpredictable. Fortuitous, or perilous in equal measure, the outcomes will not be seen by this, or even the next generation of humans who live here.

In any change, there are winners and losers. This is how most people also measure the effects of the passage of time. What is clear is that the crows are well along the way of understanding the effects of humans on their landscape and their numbers are thriving as they adapt to new food sources such as french fries, road kill, and landfill. The flocks are slowly moving north into Corrales as they forage in new areas each evening.

 

Grackles are usually seen in strip mall parking lots along Rio Rancho in the summer. Their range has expanded into the Southwest, since they days when they were introduced into Mexico by the Aztecs for their feathers. This flock is eating mistletoe, something I have never heard of before now. They feed in large numbers in agricultural fields, because they are usually ground foragers.

Bluebirds appear in New Mexico during the winter as they head south to feed on berries and the odd insect. Insects require a lot more effort to collect, but this activity makes it much easier to observe them. I used to see them under bird feeders, but I think they are after insects based on their behaviors.

Black flies and midges are not very exciting insects, but they herald the coming frenetic days of summer. They crawl from the damp. cold soil and begin breeding straight away.

In spite of all we know about ants and their crazy behaviors, there is still a lot for these eusocial insects to teach us, if we choose to look. I think these insects are out scouting for the first of the elm seeds to begin the process of rebuilding the colony. This is a very early scout.

Many birds are starting to move to locations for mating and nest building. The big raptors like the hawks and owls are already figuring out the territories. This one clearly prefers the edge of an overgrown field by Heidi's.

 

 The little kestrels still come and go seemingly at random as they hunt the smallest rodents. I have seen more nocturnal animals like raccoon and skunk, but they are very hard to capture on camera. The kestrels have amazing sight, but that's only useful during the day. Notice the cottonwood tree it is perched on has begun to bud.

The elms in the bosque are famous for their samaras, or seeds. Here is a picture of the flowers that form and are wind pollinated, just in time for the impressive winds of New Mexico spring this year. These flowers are edible, with a mild flavor that is pretty distinctive. Ants collect many of the mature seeds when they fall. The Siberian elms are invasive but were imported by ex-governor Clyde Tingley to reduce the wind and dust that early city dwellers found in Albuquerque. These trees have completely changed the look of the bosque, or maybe are a consequence of changes that time has done to the bosque. Further changes will follow, in time. For better or worse, or both, most likely.