birth

 Some plants become weeds simply by virtue of their success rather than any other factor. You merely want less of them. - Monty Don (Gardeners world)

 

    This beautiful flower belongs to Tribulus terrestris. Humans have been protecting and nurturing this plant since before language itself was invented. We have changed the climate to make the habitat more suitable, we have eliminated its competition, and prepared the soil exactly how it likes it to be. Finally we have adapted its behavior to allow it to grow faster and be more hardy by weeding out the less preferred types. We have even toughened it by spraying it regularly with herbicides so that it can develop resistance to more spraying. This plant is the dreaded puncture vine, and we are at it's mercy.

    I heard once a gardener complaining that everyone needed to pitch in and weed their gardens to eliminate this "menace". It was an odd thing to say, given how hard we work to power this plant through evolution. The species gets gets tougher even as the cloistered red roses, and blue grasses become more and more fragile under our selective breeding practices.

The thick weeds we have right now are a boon for many insects. Some of the lesser know ones include this hairstreak species (named for the fine wires on the wings to confuse predators). Bees flock to the rich pollen of the ragweeds that so irritate human nostrils.

Tree crickets are hard to see, even if they are easy to listen to. There has been an interesting discussion regarding the use of "less preferred" males to improve their songs by "baffling" or artificially amplifying their stridulations using leaves. Basically, the evolution of the use of tools and the effect this has on insect evolution. That small brain can being pretty smart with the right motivation. This is a large, confident male, based on the position gripping the edge of a leaf with engaged in a chorus.

Chrysochus auratus, or dogbane beetle is a spectacularly colored insect that feed on the poisonous sap of milkweeds and dogbane. Both these plants are slowly spreading from the south of the Corrales Preserve into the northern reaches as the shrubs and graminoids gradually replace the canopy of trees.

Darkling beetles should be hiding in the duff formed by dead tree leaves, but when it rains, they can often be found on the stalks of tall herbs like the bee blossoms where they appear to be feeding on flower nectar. Beetles and other insects seem to prefer to congregate at this time of year on large flower heads such as sunflowers.

This beetle looks like a wood borer but actually feeds as a larva on the dead roots of the mallow and adults can often be found on the plant. Those long antenna not only taste, smell and feel, but they also have other sensilla, with up to twelve different types of receptor.

Ant-lions have tiny knobs instead of antenna. These vaguely dragonfly looking insects look very different that the fearsome larva that thrive in dusty bowls flinging projectiles at nearby ants. Once there is the hint of rain, and all those cones of dust become useless, many metamorphose into winged insects like this and migrate to mates and streetlights.

The flow to the Rio Grande has been turned off, literally as many issues with water storage upstream at El Vado dam and the Corrales Siphon has eliminated the steady water release that we use to try and turn our intermittent flows into a predictable low sediment, eastern river. The many pools, sand bars, and woody debris is a novel ecosystem that is quickly exploited by different organisms such as cockle-burrs and coyote willows.

Residents of Corrales often exploit the ditches as drainage. Often pumps are used to lower a water table locally prior to digging a below ground pool. This often leads to increased vegetation in subsequent years as dormant seeds in the soil become activated. Hopefully, this water is not contaminated, but because no one tests groundwater, this is never known.

There are many apple trees bearing fruit and there are many animals ready to exploit this sugar source for food, as well as housing. The codling moth is eaten by ants and wood peckers and likely responsible for many types of fruit evolution, such as stony pits and fuzzy fruit skins. The codling moth causes premature fruit ripening by pausing apple growth when they bore into the seeds. Many parasites change the behaviour of their hosts in what usually ends up being s symbiosis over a long enough time span.

Bullfrogs usually prefer deep pools of permanent water, so are a little less abundant when the clear ditch dries out. These huge frogs are smart and adaptable to most things and many have returned to the river's edge from the ditches around Corrales.

The saltwater tamarisk is a messy plant that had transitioned from an invasive species to a mandatory habitat because it has been so successful. At this time of year they are putting out the showy pink blooms that are loved by bees, wasps and beetles.

Molluscs are rare in New Mexico, except for these land snails which have traveled around the world hitchhiking on people's garden plants as they  move from one place to another. Local roadrunners have developed quite a taste for them. They are rarely seen except during periods of high humidity.

Common snapping turtles thrive in low water conditions and this one is hunting as it waits for fish to travel down the clear ditch into it's waiting mouth.

The young turtles are incredibly cute and delicate. This specimen has only been out of its egg for a few hours and is still covered in the sand from it's underground nest. It will be a while before it has grown big enough to dominate the flora in a local pond. Snapping turtles are a highly successful species that appears to be increasing in numbers as the local cattails help to hide them in the thick mud.

 

Folds

 "Our village life would stagnate if it were not for the unexplored forests and meadows which surround it. We need the tonic of wildness -- to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk" - Thoreau (author)

Corrales Village can be quite a conflict of ideas. Near to the big city of Albuquerque, the developing resources of Rio Rancho, the organization of Los Ranchos, and the Pueblos. It is influenced by, yet very different from them all. We nestle between the mountains and the mesa, the river and the desert. With all this diversity it can be easy to forget that the bosque is neither wild, nor self sustaining and far more fragile than it would first appear.

The fall migration in Corrales is known more for the Sandhill cranes and the Balloon fiestas, but it is worth taking a moment to look at the last of the summer blooms. The common morning glory is a weed to some, an ornamental to others. Some call it poisonous and others use it to get a cheap, but risky high, and it is all these these things to different people. Corrales is likewise known for both expensive land and amateur real estate deals.

Field bindweed is also a climber that takes advantage of the tall pigweeds, or kochia, to grow towards the full sun. It is considered a noxious weed, related to morning glories, and hated by horse people.

Another hated plant is the beautiful silverleaf nightshade. Much is made of the (slightly) poisonous berries, thorns and deep roots. This close relative of the potato is a magnet for bumblebees and also is used to set milk for making cheese.

The desert globe mallow is adapted to all soils and full sun. It has the huge advantage of not offending anyone. Occasionally you can be lucky enough to find native bees sleeping among the anthers.

Desert chicory is an aster related to dandelions that attracts a wide range of pollinators. The burnt root of a related flower has been used (as a last resort) as a coffee substitute.

While I may not know (or care too much) about the difference between a desert dandelion and chicory, I know this plant is a long leaved groundcherry, or tomatillo. Oddly, it is also a nightshade like the silverleaf, but is much less vilified even though it is not (strictly speaking) native.

This is some sort of American aster. Could be a daisy species because the flower center is simple, not a group of flowers. These flowers are difficult to separately identify, can hybridize readily and often are found outside of their "official" range areas.Human migration has spread the flowers all over the globe, further confusing the taxonomy.

Sacred datura is a full sun plant that is appreciated by many insects. Among them tortoise beetles, sphinx moths, ants, bees, and hummingbirds. The flowers were often painted by Georgia O'Keeffe when there weren't any monsoon clouds, or animal bones around.

Along many of the smallest acequias in Corrales, there are many escapees from gardens. This is a day lilly and is much less common on this side of the Mississippi. The showy flowers have been selectively breed by gardeners for many generations.

This is one of the few venomous caterpillars from the foothills of Cuba. It is a type of silkworm called an Io moth. It is not actually dangerous, but can give a rash that might last a few days.

This hornworm has a false horn on the posterior to mimic a venomous insect, but the cocoons on the rump also so that the parasitoid wasps were not fooled and have laid their eggs on the inside of the body. This is a main reason that insecticides are a bad idea, while it kills the caterpillars, it also eliminates the natural control agents of these caterpillars.

This is a fiery skipper, one of the medium sized butterflies we see late in the season here in Corrales. The skippers have been used to study the benefits of using DNA instead of traditional taxonomy. It turns out, DNA is not the silver bullet biologists thought, and Linnaeus hierarchy still has a place.

Catfish thrive in the low water conditions found at the end of the Corrales irrigation season. There are many young fish that often swim in shoals as they forage for food using their sensitive barbels. These ones stand out, but against a dark mud background they are totally invisible.

While bullfrogs have some ability to change colors, they can often stand out against the wrong background. These large frogs have few predators if they are close to a pool. Their normal predators, such as pike and bass are not found here in any numbers. They are also safe from snapping turtles while out of the water, and their raccoon and fox enemies are not around during the day.

The numerous toadlets on the sandbanks left by the receding river will only move if threatened, and occur in such large numbers they are in no danger of extinction. They have an unpleasant flavor, which many dogs learn to avoid, eventually.

Mosquitos are completely resistant to most forms of human extermination. They now thrive in underground pipes and concrete areas all through Albuquerque and are no longer at risk of killing frosts, thanks to global warming and human causes of local warming, such as leaking septic systems and houses. Recently the city of Albuquerque has noticed exotic disease carrying mosquitos, such as this yellow fever mosquito. This insect has the distinction of being the cause of more human death than any other creature.

This harmless orb weaver is a beautiful and impressive spider that evokes far more fear than the literal blood suckers we have seen all during the river flood season. Their large size and spectacular coloring makes it well worth the time to observe. While they are nowhere near as intelligent or interactive as the jumping spiders, or as impressively large as the tarantulas and wolf spiders, they have an appeal all of their own.

Spiders are well known insect eaters, but far less attention seems to be given to these amazing mosquito hunters. The meadow hawks specialize in hunting through grass during the colder months and collect large numbers of small insects such as gnats.

This insect was a new one for me. It looks like an ant but is actually a wasp. Most wasps are parasitoids that lay their eggs in other creatures. This one is looking for small moth caterpillars that eat paper, called clothes moths.

This is another parasitoid, but is a fly that is often confused with a bee. The specific species depends of identifying thin bands in the wings that I was not able to capture in this photograph.

This good picture clearly shows a pearl crescent butterfly. While lepidoptery is an important biology study in it's own right, it is also worth pursing just for the sheer beauty of the adult insects and crazy life stories they can follow. Confidentially, however, most of these particular naturalists appear to be quite insane.

It is worth being cautious around any plant with more than three names, such as this Foresteria species, New Mexico Olive, Privet, Texas forsythia, or whatever you choose to call it. Those purple drupes provide an important source of nutrients for winter birds and right now have a juicy red flesh. They are barely edible, however.

The fruit, or drupe, has a surprisingly scientific definition that is jaw droppingly badly applied to anything that looks even remotely like an olive. Russian olives are another starvation fruit used by many animals. They grow in profusion on the edges of riparian habitats, and while invasive, they have crossed the line into native as they are the preferred habitat for some endangered species, such as the southwestern yellow breasted flycatcher. These small birds need very thick cover to breed and use stands of tamarisk and Russian olive as a stand in for the dense undergrowth that willows and young cottonwoods used to provide. Thinning the forest would profoundly alter the delicate natural balance and lead to unpredictable results, which is already happening, or course.

There is a lot we do not know about coyotes. We know they have an impressive sweet tooth for fallen fruits, which abound now in Corrales (your neighbors will only accept so much fresh fruit). Here the grape seeds are left in the coyote scat that these canids use to mark their wanderings. While dogs cannot digest tannins and other components of grapes, the coyotes can adapt to them and even appear to relish their taste. They also like mulberries, apricots, apples and peaches. Most coyotes visit by crossing the river where there is more space to just be their wild song dog selves, but there are a few dens along the lateral ditch.

Crayfish are kind of a starvation food for humans. Widely available, easy to catch, and frowned upon unless served at a tourist restaurant. The ditches sometimes have people placing traps for these crustacean in them, but the effort to clean and prepare them is hardly worth it. Then there is the issue of trapping on publicly owned lands...

Most crayfish are very small, although some can reach large sizes. This mess appears to be from a human, as most animals crack open the carapace, or just swallow the whole animal.

Garter snakes specialize in examining small pools for minnows cut off from the receding waters. They can be found during the early morning, especially if there are many fish or tadpoles in a watering hole.

This puddle held a goldfish that was definitely dumped here as an abandoned pet. The pet industry has a lot of very dark secrets in it's closets that most people chose to not think about (yes, this applies to cats and dogs, too) but released goldfish are a true scourge.

As winter approaches, the last of the young fence lizards are scurrying around. A majority will not make it through, but they are perfectly adapted to the imperfect world they have found themselves in. Lizards do not get the same love from Corrales residents that even the lowest of flowers do, but they are all connected together. This youngster might live another six years, while that flower's bloom will not have more than a few weeks, at most. So even though this lizard is fragile appearing, the species is tough, rugged and well adapted to navigating a changing world.

"Adapt yourself to the things among which your lot has been cast and love sincerely the fellow creatures with whom destiny has ordained that you shall live. " Marcus Aurelius (Stoic philosopher)
 

Verge

"Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle." - Arthur Schopenhaue

I am a big believer in learning about myself by watching nature. I admit I am a little obsessed about an activity that most people consider, at best an indulgence. Probably, I am even a little preachy about the virtues of watching nature. Still, there is pure magic that should be shared when seeing how linked everything is to everything else by invisible threads of the toughest consequence.

People are always affected by the insects they see every day. In the city that is more likely to be cockroaches, ants, wasps, and bed bugs. None of these attract much positive interest and removing them seems to the the only topic worthy of discussion. In the countryside, where diversity is much higher, the destructive pests are also noted the most, with everything else relegated to mild interest. This is a darkling beetle that is alert and poised to release a chemical stink to ward off predators. It is far from the only beetle labelled as a "stink bug", which can get confusing.

This similar looking beetle is one of the Prionus species. Most of these large beetles inhabit a world just under our feet which we are, for the most part, completely ignorant of. As their grubs slowly munch though tough roots using powerful jaws.

This little beetle is a carrion beetle often found out in the desert. I can't find out much about it but I know they are present in great numbers during the summer.

Wasps can be hard to photograph and there are even more species of wasps than there are beetles, which is a lot. They also have incredible life cycles, with most species parasitizing caterpillars, or sometimes oak trees.

This photo shows not only the ubiquitous aphids, who breed clonally, but a single lacewing egg on an invisible stalk. These are laid by the adults near where aphids were detected. While the lacewings eat the soft bodied, defenseless aphids in large numbers, they have to leave a few to repopulate so that the next generation of their broods can continue to munch.

A sulphur butterfly. These insects are studied endlessly by biologists to try and understand why they are so exquisitely sensitive to visual and chemical cues. They live in a world of visual UV and odor chemicals related to flowers and each other. Humans are quite unable to perceive, or even imagine yet how they see their world.

 

 Bagworms are an impressive force of nature, resistant to many types of human killing because of the tough silk bag they grow inside and their amazing reproductive ability. farmers and gardeners have done a great job of eliminating their predators and competitors. The study of their silk is a good example of academic interest actually being more useful than practical applications. No one is going to be walking around in bagworm clothing anytime soon, even though the silks show potential properties useful to the garment industry.Bagworm silks are a good way to learn about how proteins fold and perform under high stresses.

The simple size of many insects is a barrier for many people to learn about insects. Ironically, once an insect is dead, people are usually interested to learn more. This centipede was crushed by a car and is a rare visitor in the Corrales bosque, only coming out from underground once the is sufficient moisture in the air.

The large sphinx moths are difficult to photograph and hard to study. They are also very tough and surprisingly strong, a true survivor. Moths this size are often as big as the bats they share the night sky with, so moths do not worry as much with being fast or stealthy. They do have to spend a lot more time keeping those large flight muscles warm and functional so it takes a while for them to get going.

 The idea that caterpillars turn into moths would be crazy if you tried to explain it to a visitor from a different planet. Ontogenetic niche shift is the term for caterpillars and butterflies living in the same ecosystem yet not competing with each other. Biologists who study this competition say that in general, if adults and their progeny did compete directly, then the trend is towards bigger children...and cannibalism. Something to think about next time you are watching your nephew grow taller than you are while at a family get together over turkey.

One of the universal uses of stiff hairs is to ward off ant bites, this was illustrated while I watched a bumblebee and an ant argue over who was pollinating this flower. The bumblebee won, mostly because of the stiff hairs that kept the jaws of the defensive ant at bay long enough to move on to another flower.

Cocoons and chrysalis come in many shapes and sizes and I have no idea what insect created this house on cattails using a thick, white silk case, I suspect a spider of some kind.

This is one of the many species of thread-waisted wasp found in New Mexico, which has a impressive variety. Many are found in marshy areas is is not a common resource in this state. However, while only .6% of the land is wetland, 85% of New Mexico species depend on wetland ecology at some point in their life cycle.

Mayflies are a necessary food source for trout, and knowledge of this species is essential if you want to be any good at all at catching that fish. The mayflies only live long enough to breed, and some species no longer have actual adult stages. We know A LOT about mayfly reproduction, simply because of trout fisherman and the associated interest in raising trout for the industry.

Cicadas are quite impressive, not only for their noise, but also their life cycle and their effect on ecosystems. These large insects are caught in large numbers by many birds, including raptors.

These large feathers come from the local feral turkey population, whose numbers fluctuate quite wildly. Birds molt is distinct ways as they prepare of fall and the associated migrations (which are already underway). While turkey do not migrate, they do change their plumage and behaviors in response to the same environmental cues.

 

Birds and lizards do not poop the same as mammals. Mammal precursors, called monotremes do have a similar system of cloaca, which is also found in sharks. This is this one of the ways comparative biology is used to try and tease out the evolution of traits and species, because it is so confusing. The modern trend is towards genetic sequencing, which is even more murky, but has the advantage of at least being easier to agreeing on what is being looked at. This picture is turkey poop, showing the solid white of the uric acid that is produced by birds instead of the liquid urea we make.

 Parasitism is seriously undervalued by the general human population. More than any other group, parasites such as this dodder, help improve connections between the flow of energy at different levels of use that is vital to any healthy ecosystem.

 

 Here you can see all the different types of plants that can colonize a river bank. Each plant has a different niche it can use and each had other species that rely on their own niche to prevent too much competition that can prevent reproductive success, or fitness. The wet grass contains thousands of small toads, while the tall willows support many sap sucking insects and also the next generation of cottonwood trees that will develop over the next forty years.

Mud is a critical resource to many animals. The dry patch in the middle of this ditch bank shows where the burrowing animals like gophers have ejected dry tunnel spoil as they explore and prepare their tunnels for fall. Many other animals use the abandoned tunnels for shelter or to lay eggs.

The muddy pool and numerous holes in the bank show where the young crayfish are active in the pools seeking detritus to feed on. The many raccoon paw prints also show where those large mammals travel each evening to investigate each pool for these tasty crustaceans.

Most people know about the silvery minnow, they are used by biologists to try and explain why a bosque is so important and need to be allowed to flood. These discussions usually turn political and acrimonious quickly. While important, all that hot air fades away when one finds a tiny slippery silver flash in a horse's footprint miles from the nearest source of permanent water. The story of how this fish got there sounds like total fiction, but is all true.

The first of the turkey vultures have returned on their way south to South America for the winter. The large gap in the tail is because these birds shed their plumage is short bursts, allowing them to continue flying. This usually happens in September, but is quite a complex process.

This year Corrales was lucky to have quite a few Mississippi kites coming through and catching June bugs, cicadas, and other large beetles. They often swoop low over large grassy lawns and snatch them as they emerge from underground. It is usually obvious when the bird has caught a cicadas, like in this picture, as the insects protest fiercely while they are carried away and consumed.

    In the recent past, unknown people where shooting at these raptors, probably in a misguided attempt to protect their chickens or small dogs. While that very human behavior may never fully be stamped out, it does help to know a little about these amazing creatures and to watch their behaviors a least a little. The importance of insects is subtle, but their influence is completed woven into the fabric of our entire existence. Insects connect us to these feathered travelers, as they stop in Corrales briefly. Then  they continue about their business of giving purpose to those lush garden lawns people covet so much.