Spot

 When people see some things as beautiful, other things will then become ugly.

                                                                                                                    Lao Tzu

Beauty and ugliness are intertwined in nature, we harm ourselves when we try to distinguish between "good" and "bad" based on how something looks or acts. Of course, no-one avoids making judgments about a thing, but that doesn't mean we should.

All flowers are a communication, a transaction, between an immobile plant, and a needy insect. There is a lot more going on there that it would first appear, as with most communications there are layers of meaning to what is said. Why flowers appeal to human senses is a bit confusing, because it seems to have happened completely by accident. This accident is the cause of the American population spending an estimated 6.3 billion dollars a year on cut flowers. The average household in the US also spends $500 dollars on gardening and supplies each year.

 

Flowers are odd things because they rely on selection pressures that can actually be bad for the plant over all. An example would be attracting specialized pollinators whose larva will also eat the plant's leaves. Most of these interactions can still end up being very beneficial in odd ways.

How plants process and produce pollen is very odd. Russian olive is noted for the fragrance of its pollenkitt (a substance coating the pollen grains), that gives off a musky odor and is especially appealing to bees that use basket hairs to collect clumps. The pollenkitt helps the grains pack into a tidy lump for transport, which their pollinators appreciate.

Look closely in some globe mallow flowers and you will sometimes find a small, native bee sleeping inside. You can find a small bee defending this real estate from other bees of the same species. This behavior is unusual and no one is really sure why they do this. Especially when there appears to be plenty of flowers to go around.

The yerba mansa plant uses white to stand out in the shady forest floor. The bosque flooding is a boon to this flower, which is (sort of) named for the shady, swampy backwaters where it is found. This flower uses an inflorescense to attract whatever pollinator is in the area.

Flowers may want a specialized pollinator in some circumstances because these carry the right pollen for fertilization efficiently. This flower is closed unless a heavy bumblebee lands on the landing pad section to it and opens the trapdoor. This prevents small insects from plundering the flower, and encourages the bumblebees who like a large nectar payout with each visit.

Most asters have an open faced flower than attracts many types of insects, some of whom have the right pollen on them. The yellow section is really a cluster of tiny "false flowers"

Catkins are an intermediate step between wind pollinated plants, and insect pollinated flowers. The willows have kept this rather archaic system because flowers do not last very long in humid, damp conditions near water.

the saltwater tamarisk looks like it's flowers should be insect pollinated, but the pollen is actually spread by the wind. It seems to be very attractive to small wasps, however.

 

 Flowers can be very adverse to self fertilization, or easily self pollinate. Those flowers, like this one, that has the pollen kept very far away from the central pistil usually have developed that way to reduce incidents of self pollination.

This is actually a rare sight, it is the flower of a cultivated potato, whose ancestors came to Europe from the mid 16th century and contributed to the dominance of Europe over the Mediterranean cultures in the following centuries. This flower looks a lot like the silverleaf nightshade found in New Mexico, because they are all related in the nightshade family. One plant changed empires, the other plant is an indestructible weed, so it goes.

How flowers are used is impressively varied, by humans as well as by insects. This flower beetle is feeding on the pollen as well as the nectar of this showy flower. By going from the nectar to the pollen and then straight on to the next flower the insect does as the mute plant wishes.

Wasps are very adaptable, and not only use the flowers in the traditional, insect way, but they also hunt other insects hiding in there.

 

 Many beetles often use flowers as meeting places to find others of their species, this is much more common in the fall as the last of the flowers are disappearing.

Cactus produce huge amounts of pollen and the bees seem pretty blissed out as they burrow down to the base where the nectary is located. 

Insect activity is complex. This small group of aphids is being tended to by a few ants that guard and protect them in exchange for the honeydew they give off as a byproduct of their feeding on plant sap. Ants are mostly discouraged from visiting flower nectaries, so they collect sugar from extrafloral sources instead.

The beetle population is rapidly spreading out in the tree foliage. They are feeding and mating in a desperate hurry. Most of the time they are not considered destructive because their damage is spread out over a large area on plants that are tolerant of damage.

This beetle is the Cottonwood leaf beetle. Not considered a pest because cottonwoods tend to grow in dense clusters of trees, and also there are no farmers who guard these tree's futures or use it's products.

The numbers of cottonwood beetles are going to be very large this year because of the perfect combination of timing from rain and temperatures.

As the numbers of beetle larva increases, the numbers of predators will rise to compensate. Here, an unknown carnviorous beetle is predating the cottonwood leaf beetle.

The leaf beetles survive by producing far more young than predators can handle, and then they vanish in following years to prevent predator numbers from rising.

Other beetles are common every year. They avoid being predated on by being very unpalatable to eat. This young conchuela bug is noticeable by having a red band around the edge and has a tough shell.

The older conchuela bugs add a foul odor to prevent other animals, such as mice trying to snack on them as well. They also have wings to increase their dispersal range. Whether or not this insect is a pest depends on abiotic and biotic factors like other host plants, or the environmental conditions that year.

This grasshopper looking insect is a katydid, and has a beautiful looking pattern on the thorax when seen in close up. Typically katydids are nocturnal and have long, slender antennae.

 

Plenty of people have written about these moths already this summer. As of the time of publishing, the moths have just about migrated through on their way to the mountains. Actual miller moths are a species found in Europe, but the name is given to any large moth that sheds scales that people are talking about.

Spiders are usually solitary creatures, but I am not sure if this is a recently hatched egg sac, or a species of cooperative spider. Some co-operative spiders, like the long legged harvest-men, are not even a spider species,

Cooperation among insects varies. These ants are usually gathering elm seeds individually, bu they will work together when there is a large insect to dismember.

The cormorants nest together on the islands at Tingly beach at night, but they dive for fish alone most of the time. This one is drying its feathers after a diving excursion. The black of its feathers is from melanin, which is actually a structural protein that helps the feathers withstand the damage they sustain from getting wet.

 

 This is an out of focus picture, but I like it because it shows a very dynamic pose of a coopers hawk with its prey.

Every year, many birds die as a result of human interference. Some deaths are intentional, and others are accidental. The bird dies regardless. This raven was likely electrocuted by an electrical transformer on a telephone pole. Others have been killed by eating mice poisoned with warfarin. Most are hit by speeding cars.

Red eared sliders have adapted well to human activity. Most were released pets. The species originally lived in Florida and the Mississippi river and were exported in the tens of millions in the 80's and 90's. I remember owning this species while living in Madagascar, Indonesia, and Majorca. They were all likely imported from farms in Louisiana.

The western parson spider is a commonly seen spider found in homes and it usually holds still long enough to be photographed. It is a very calm spider that does not bite, like all of them actually.

The toads have laid and produced their eggs, the tadpoles seem a little late this year. The woodhouse toad tadpoles are hardy and adaptable, they like permanent water and have just the right length gestation period to take advantage of the environment (eating pond weed) while getting out of it (to avoid carnivorous insect larva).

Not all tadpoles are wood house toads. This similar looking tadpole was found in the high desert hidden in a tiny muddy pool in the middle of the night. It will grow into a New Mexico Spadefoot frog and live underground all year until the rains come again. While the desert would seem inhospitable to a frog, it is blessedly free of some predators, like fish.

This common snapping turtle has died of unknown reasons. These large critters are often damaged by passing cars in the evening.

The big females like to bask in the shallows during the day and can move very fast when they want to. Because they are the apex predators in their "normal" environment, they often do not need to expend a lot of energy except when feeding or laying eggs.
 

The bullfrog was accidentally introduced into Corrales by farming experiments at the end of the great depression. They are big, rough and tough which can predate of almost any living creature they can swallow. They are not however, stupid. They adapt to humans and almost any climate condition. They can show amazing intelligence and personality and make excellent pets (other than their mating calls in the summer...during the middle of the night.) I think these amphibians are beautiful, but they are ugly too. There are entire essays that could be written about this one creature alone, but I will save that for another time...

Solve

 Flowers are not designed to be attractive to humans. Because humans are so sight centered we appreciate many of the same signals that have evolved to appeal to insects pollinators, this appears to be purely an accidental side effect. Of course, the story is far more nuanced than that, but you get the idea. Over time plants, humans, and nature in general builds up a range of co-incidences that makes the intricately fitting jigsaw that is the world around us.

Asters are a widespread group of plants whose blooms are mostly general purpose, open faced, and appeal to many insect pollinators. They are a complex plant however, than has evolved to exploit many ecological niches.

It is hard to research poppies because internet research talks about literally nothing else but the opium poppy. However, bumble bees and honey bees go crazy for this flower because of the huge amount of pollen this flower makes. This flower is perfectly capable of self fertilizing, but sexual selection allows better evolution through recombination. The bright contrast and reds appeal specifically to bees and flies.

Just about all flowers need to have a bilateral symmetry. This has something to do with the horizon detecting eyes that most flying pollinators have. Also, symmetry is a good sign that the plant is young and healthy, because asymmetry likelihood increases with age as blemishes from insect attack, disease, or anything else damaging shows clearly. Periwinkles recess the nectar part of the flower, which increases the likelihood insects will transfer pollen where there is a lot of competition for attention from other flowers.

Bindweed are a climbing vine with short lived flowers that are attractive to moths. Symmetry is a lot less important to night pollinators and flowers that are ephemeral. these flowers close during the day to limit access to general pollinators that would waste the flowers resources. The tube structure also appeals to bumblebees that can sometimes force open the petals during the day.

Plants that can attract specialized pollinator groups are more effective at pollen transfer because those specialists visit only that species of flower, allowing statistically faster fertilization, important where the growing season is short. A fused corolla (tube) forces only those insects with long tongues to visit and is a sign of the evolutionary arms race between pollinators and flowers that quite puzzled Darwin.

Many birds use color, like this red shouldered blackbird sporting contrasting epaulets. Their musical songs, flashy displays, and bright colors work because the risk of being eaten by a predator is lower than the risk of not mating where there are many blackbirds in a small area like a wetlands for only part of a year.

Yellow breasted chats are usually very secretive, so I was happy to find this one out singing its very distinctive song. Birds have a unique one way breathing system that uses air sacs in their bones and one way valves to use each lungful of air twice. This is not only effective for flying, but does extra duty by allowing them to use circular breathing for songs.

 

 Great Blue herons seem to be far more understated when it comes to courtships. However, they grow special breeding plumage to show off to the opposite sex, which they sport until around June. You can just make out the special pair of thin feathers sprouting from the back of this heron's head.

 

The point of all this courtship is to produce the following generation. The most enigmatic chicks are usually the great horned owls, AKA "murder floofs". We are usually lucky enough to watch a brood each year fledge their chicks, normally one chick survives to adulthood. This chick is just about to lose its downy plumage and collect the first flight feathers. Notice the distinctive horns are now just tiny nubs.

This is the same chick, but now much more confident. While it can now fly, it is depend on its parents for food for about another nine months as it figures out how to hunt for itself.

The flooded bosque means small mammals are often flushed from their burrows and exposed. This vole is headless and left in the middle of a path, indicating the predator likely was already well fed and was probably a horned owl.

Mammals are plentiful, this young cottontail is unsuccessfully trying to hide by freezing after being spotted in my backyard. I shooed it back in the hole it came out of so mom could give it a few more lessons in survival.

Insects are also growing rapidly. Many use the method of just producing far too many young for predators to eat at one time. Many insects like this swarm of aphids can clone themselves, covering a lot of generations in a very short period of time.

 

 Spiders are an interesting insect to watch in the bosque because there is so much variety of species and behaviors. This may look like a black widow, but is more likely a closely related species of cobweb spider and completely harmless, as they all are.

This spider goes by the horrifying honorific of giant wetland spider, and she is also zealously guarding her newly produced egg sac. This fearsome looking spider is also not a danger to humans.

In the bosque, many spiders are actually at risk of being prey. Not only from other, bigger spiders, but also from wasps that lay eggs inside their body after chemically paralyzing the arachnid. This wolf spider is taking a risk being outside its ambush burrow.

 

 Moths rely on many tricks to avoid being predated on. This one looks exactly like a twig when it is not moving.

Normally, this cutworm would blend into its background of leaves, however the windy weather brought down the branch this one was on, necessitating a scramble towards the nearest tree trunk.

There are 100,000 species of wasp and they are very diverse. This one was resting in the weeds, I am still working on its identification. I know there are going to be many more species coming out in the coming months.

 

This tiger swallowtail looks dead, but actually made a full recovery after warming up and resting on a damp apple slice for the morning. These huge, colorful butterflies visit our bosque, but never seem to be around in large numbers.

the checkered whites are a small butterfly species, they specialize in feeding on mustard grasses and often can be seen anywhere these plants grow in profusion.

Most moths pupate in the soil, but most people do not find their cocoons in the dense leaf litter, it is even harder to find the adults. This is some form of euclidia moth, blending in perfectly with the cottonwood leaves.

This is the larva of the yellow ladybird beetle. Ladybirds actually come in a range of colors but they are all predators of soft bodied insects like aphids. The adults have special interactions to deal with the ants that often protect the aphids including bleeding toxic chemicals from their leg joints and a shiny domed body that is difficult to grip.

Many insects are invasive and compete with native species. This is a native rough stink bug, NOT the invasive Marmorated stink bug that occurs in much higher numbers and is considered a pest. These insects also just just like squash bugs, but are a very different insect.

This is a young zodion (fly) species. People do not appreciate how important flies are as pollinators, or how perfect they are as fliers. Flies have a pair of special organs know as halteres that help them control flight and is different than normal insect wings. They are true masters of the air as anyone who has tried to catch one with attest to.

Turtles are impressively adapted to life in water, some are adapted to slow water, others to fast water. Deep or shallow water have different types of tutle shapes living in them. Each body type is designed differently for their unique environment. This common snapper is designed to be big and burly, a slugger that can scavenge or hunt and defend itself from most things in its environment.

 

 Other animals are not designed for some environments. While whiptail lizards can swim, they will drown if the water is flowing, usually because the cold water saps their energy quickly. They have enough skill to dart across reed filled puddles to escape predators, however.

Many skunks seem to get caught as the ditches fill. Skunks tend to have a pigheadedness about crossing whatever is in their path and this often ends badly for them. They can swim well to cross ditches, and they often do this during their evening rambles, but I usually find at least a few that drown each year. Scavengers such as the turtles dispose of the carcass eventually.

The beauty of Corrales to most people is the serene walks along the "canals", ditches or acequias. This water has been carefully managed and conserved each growing season since the early 18th century (probably longer). Many people appreciate the taming of the river, even as they fight to change the future of this valley to allow more, or less people to live here.

 

 Water from the river is always trying to take back real estate, too. Right now the river is making large sections impassable to humans through backwaters, rising water tables, mud, and mosquitos. The willows are saturated right now, creating perfect habitats for many species such as toads and water fowl.

This land that is off limits because of the high water levels will sprout new cottonwoods in future years, if they survive. The unpredictable river banks allow forest rejuvenation over several years, reducing invasive plant spread and letting the bosque pause in the drastic changes that continue to sweep across it. It is fascinating how the lack of access to the river banks that casual users complain about, tends to to be the same things that allow the best of the bosque wildness to shine. This is just one more example of the complex mix of random co-incidences of co-existence that allows all these organisms (and different people) to exist together.