Spread

 The funny thing about the Bosque is there are a great many people who think they know our ecosystem, simply because they have been living in it for a long time. In this case, familiarity can only breed contempt if there is not an effort to value what they have and try to look deeper. What people want from this community varies by individual and also over time. But we all have to live with those consequences.

Woodpeckers have a quite sophisticated form of communication, as do all birds. Woodpeckers will also use drumming which is a complex skill that they have specific brain neurons for.  They choose special resonating dead tree limbs that must be dry and hard. Time spent advertising is also time spent not looking for food. So the signals carry a lot of subtle information to each other.

Muskrats also call, but tend to be much quieter because they are preyed on by everything. While they focus mostly on eating cattails, they actually omnivores. There is a low density of muskrats currently in Corrales, but that is likely to change as the cattails continue to fill up our irrigation ditches. At a certain critical level, as population becomes high and the food becomes scarce, they will clear great swathes of aquatic plants and drive away other forms of wetland creatures. This likely will be seen at the Via Oreana ditch within a few years.

The shape of turtles is unique, in that it is a good design to warm up their internal organs in the sun. Sliders like this one are becoming far more numerous as the water temperature rises. I think this is a big bend slider, as there is no distinctive "red ear" on the side of the head.

We start to see egrets as the fields are flooded for the growing season. The cattle egrets tend to prefer open fields and insects. The snowy egrets, like this pair, prefer to hunt fish in shallow water. These are elegant birds, until you spot their ridiculous big yellow feet.

Bluebirds are often seen flying, but they spend a large amount of time of the ground as well. Picking insects from the ground is easier than catching them on the fly, so to speak.

The belted kingfisher is devilishly hard to photograph. They appear with the first of the mosquito fish, but they spend the majority of their time creating alarm calls,, and chasing other birds away.

This bird looks a lot like a pigeon, until you notice the hooked, raptor bill. The Swainson's hawk has a strange expression for a hawk because its eyes are more protruding than the more common coopers and red tailed species. These birds will breed and rest in the bosque until August, then migrates back to South America.

For some reason, this female wood duck is not paired off with a male, and now has at least three suitors hanging around performing head bobbing.

The warmer weather is bringing out the grass species, and the early seeding ones are already getting ready to seed the next generation.

The variety of plants in the bosque can often seem limited compared to a rain forest. But the seasons mean that different species will appear at different times. This is the cryptically named touristplant.

 

 This ant is considerably bigger than it looks. It is a carpenter ant but does not destroy houses like a termite or anything like that. They feed on insects, seeds, carrion, and aphid secretions.

 This newly emerged carpenter bee was found in Albuquerque by my wife. These big insects look distinctively different that the fuzzy bumblebees we see later in the year.

There are many small rabbits appearing now as the fresh young grass attracts them into people's backyards. This species is pretty ubiquitous throughout the warm seasons on well watered lawns.

Water is life, and the control of canals is a way of life that is under threat, principally because it needs everyone to work together for it to work. Now, the process is left up to the Mid Rio Grande Conservancy District funded by property taxes.

Small water projects are notoriously difficult to keep going for long periods of time, because circumstances change. At the Corrales Elementary school, the interior drain is viewed as defunct by the Village of Corrales. Just inside the school grounds is an area of about an acre that used to be a thriving wetlands that was abandoned at the start of the pandemic as the school converted to a wastewater system. Given that the school needs land to possibly enlarge to include new middle school, I think it is unlikely that this area will ever be revitalized to live up to this fine sign ever again.

Hummingbirds do not need these feeders to survive, if there are plenty of flowers they can use. The feeders help make their numbers visible. This is a black chinned hummingbird. There is something odd about using a plastic flower to entice a hummingbird to be see by humans.

 

 The river is just below its crest and the willows slow and hold the backwaters, allowing silt to settle, and creating breeding sites for many species of insects and animals. Crucially, humans also stay away from flooded areas, allowing animals some respite from the normal heavy use of recreational users in the bosque.

The lateral ditch has filled up fully for the first time on April 18. Every drop is now pumped up from the Rio grande with huge electric pumps. The gravity fed system from the Cochiti dam is not going to be operational for at least another year. In the flat Corrales Flood plain, water head elevation of a few inches means the water can travel by gravity over hundreds of feet. This is why this lateral pipe drain is so far above the clear ditch, and why it is loaded with sediment. This sediment was removed by the Cochiti dam and broke the Corrales siphon. This same sediment is slowly filling the interior drain and will likely lead to it being removed all together unless the Corrales community is able to (quickly) find a value for wet land that it has not thought of before. The clear ditch was dredged by MRGCD last year, but the interior drain it is connected to is slated for development. So, like the elementary school's constructed wetland, will not be maintained. This will have a devastating impact to almost the last example of wetlands left in the Corrales region.

The interior drain Committee is having a special meeting to present new ideas for its development at the Corrales Community Center. You should attend.