Winds

“Life is the soil, our choices and actions the sun and rain, but our dreams are the seeds” - Richard Paul Evans 

Migration is a big deal for all ecosystems, but it even more so for refugia like the Corrales Bosque that act like an oasis. Some birds only breed here, others visit briefly on their way to further places. Some live here year round.

 

 Flickers are a woodpecker species that will often hunt for ants on the forest floor as well as probing into old wood. They stay for the winter, feeding on mast and attracted to suet on bird feeders. They are a gorgeous bird with a lot of color and great behaviors.

Coopers hawks have speckled chests and long, striped tails when perched. This one is roosting and hunting small rodents like mice. These are easy to spot as there is plenty of sunflower seeds falling and their ground cover has been cut by the ditch clearing activities from MRGCD.

Seeds play a big part in activities of the fall for all animals. Sunflower seeds of the bird feeders attract feeding birds and also coopers hawks. The wild sunflowers are likely spread by the spilt sunflower seeds from feeders and the resultant plants now sustain large numbers of small rodents, birds and insects. The seeds pictured here are from milkweeds (of monarch butterfly fame) these plants use air dispersal methods just like the cottonwoods.

Grasses are growing really well right now. None better than this species of Ravenna grass, spreading north along the west side of theriver. They form thick swales that crowd out every plant  species around them. People are slowly coming round to the threat they pose to wildlife in the Corrales bosque, but it is probably too late without more elbow grease and awareness.

Ravanna grass is an amazing invader. The long stems are tipped with thousands of seeds which reach into the air of most mature stands. Their seeds send out colonists both near and far. They grow fast in full sun, but also grow slowly and insidiously in dense cover. Their roots and leaves dry out and shade the soil. This can increase the soil salinity, decreasing the ability of other young plants to establish a foothold.

 

 Humans help by creating open spaces with trails that a new colony tussock populates with many small plants. These wait until the sunlight increases. As the trail widens, or the river cuts into the bank, the small plants grow quicker, then repeat the cycle.

 

 In areas of open ground under a tree canopy, the stands grow slowly and their seeds are more dispersed. Unless the roots are removed they will re-sprount. These stands trap and hold cottonwood seeds off the ground, preventing them from sprouting in the soil. Ravanna grass also tends to grow at the base of other trees, eventually cutting off their nutrients and killing the smaller trees.

 

Volunteers like these can help. But many, many more are needed. The seed heads need to be removed and prevented from spreading and this is pretty easy to do if you can get into the thick willow swales where they start, but this duty has to be done pretty much year round. The leaves need to be cut and mulched to prevent ground shading. This is harder due to the sheer volume of foliage, and they will grow back thicker. The roots need to be dug out to prevent re-sprouting, this is pretty hard and time consuming but the most permanent solution.

Flies are a pretty ingenious family. This is a tachnid/robber fly that feeds on bees visiting the sunflowers, as well as the nectar directly. Officially, this is an Asiloidea (until I get a moment to look into it further).

Bumblebees and native bees can often be found in the evening clasping onto flowers with their jaws until the temperature gets high enough to fly again. They rely on their warning colors for protection, but the fall migration of birds relies on similar insects to feed on, like the large grasshoppers.

Virginia creepers are turning a bright red color now as they recycle nutrients. Birds are able to digest the fruits, but they are not terribly nutritious. They also contain crystals called raphides that are a fiendishly complex system of calcium regulation used by plants the same way humans use calcium stores in our bones.

Tansyasters are definitely present in large numbers right now and are one of the few sources of pollen and nectar still available to generalist insects.

The colder nights nudge plants to reabsorb their photosynthesis and water apparatus and spend resources storing nutrients in the roots. The red color is a protective pigment called anthocyanin, although other plants use an alternate system. There is no actual evidence that this food dye helps with free radical suppression in humans.

Lizards constantly move from shadows to sunlight to control their exposure to sunlight. They use vitamin D synthesized from sunbathing to metabolize calcium. They need the heat to be able to move efficiently in order to catch their insect prey with quick bursts of speed.

Bullfrogs prefer open areas of permanent water. They also sunbathe, but mostly they need the heat to help fuel their metabolism and digest their rather large meals.

Civil Rustic moth. Moths are a huge part of the the bosque ecology. They feed on many seeds and attract bats and birds.

The common house fly is much slower during the fall months. They can often be picked up from the stucco they are warming on in the morning hours.

There are actually many butterflies adapted to the colder weather and these often bask in the sun to raise their body temperature. This species is noted for its preference for food plants that produce a type of chemical that stimulates the appetite of the caterpillars and encourages the females to lay her eggs.

Wasps often change their diets in the fall, returning to starches and sugars from fallen fruits. Their summer activities usually involve picnics because fructose and protein sources are very important to their nest rearing activities. These insects are usually very docile when they aren't defending a nest. This one is feeding on some egg white.

This tiny caterpillar is going to grow really fast. Their ability to use threads for spinning webs is impressive and not often appreciated.

Humans know all sorts of clever things, but it is sobering to reflect that there is no human knowledge of what the larvae of this particular moth species eats. It is a Pale-lined angle moth and seems to pupate in the soil.

 

Ground spiders like this species do well in the fall as they can stay protected from the cold in crevices before coming out in the heat of the day. This family of spiders contains 2,000 species, with more constantly being discovered.

 

 That red hourglass distinctively identifies this spider with a quite undeserved reputation for danger. There have been 2,000 black widow bites in the US last year. There have been no fatalities in the last year. In contrast, there have been 6.7 million motor vehicle crashes in the same time in the US with 39,000 fatalities. 400 people in the US were struck by lightning last year and about 30 were fatal. Spiders are not a lethal danger.

 

 Spider webs are a popular decoration for fall. In the wild, webs come in two flavors ; the mats and the webs. the mats are a sensing surface that the spider uses to detect prey. The threads from the classic spider webs are often strung across paths and are usually laced with pheromones to communicate chemically with like minded spiders.

  

The spider genus with the fancy name; Kukulcania, named after a mesoamerican serpent deity. This is likely a male southern house spider and pretty well known for being docile and not really venomous at all. These crevice spiders like to hide in cracks for their whole life spans.

This fearsome looking insect is the larval antlion. It ambushes ants from the base of cone pit traps and flicks sand at insects that approach to get them to tumble down into their jaws. They are responsible for the long, twisty trails in the dust along the ditch trails in Corrales.

This bee has an unusually short abdomen and so is not a honeybee drone that is typically cast out of the communal hive during fall. Many insects are dying now as living gets tougher. This is not usually a problem as they have mostly finished mating and laying their eggs by now. There is a lot of variety in this life task.

 This is a fascinating insect. The infamous male bagworm from the family Psychidae. The moth has clear wings. The caterpillars increase in size over the summer and it is very rare to see the male out of the case. The female has vestigial wings, mouth parts, basically everything except her one thousand eggs which remain in her bag with her corpse over the winter to hatch out in May.

Every year, around this time there is an influx of people who move into the bosque looking for space to live. Numbers are hard to come by, but their numbers can be seen by their detritus, usually cardboard, food scraps, supermarket carts. Occasionally they chop down trees, start fires, but mostly they dump trash. The bosque is only 12 miles long and there are few sections where a person can camp out for very long without being noticed. The users of the bosque are very diverse and its absolutely amazing how well everyone works together to share the space. 

Of course, it is the exceptions that prove this rule. And the Balloon fiesta period creates the largest number of visitors to the bosque, and so statistically also has the highest incidence of damage to the preserve. It is important for the Corrales residents, while watching these shenanigans, to remember those people visiting the bosque also carry their dreams with them. Visitors just don't have the same connection to this patch of land as we do. Those of us who are left behind after the party has finished are always handed the broom before anyone can turn out the lights.

Still we are lucky to have this duty, to live in this place where suburbia touches, but does not (yet) quite manage to reach. I am grateful to have an obligation to look after and sometimes care for it. A place where there is room to dream.

*Why should we tolerate a diet of weak poisons, a home in insipid surroundings, a circle of acquaintances who are not quite our enemies, the noise of motors with just enough relief to prevent insanity? Who would want to live in a world which is just not quite fatal?

—Rachel Carson (1907-1964), *Silent Spring, 1962.

wings

"Nature, when left to universal laws, tends to produce regularity out of chaos" - Immanuel Kant

"There are no forms in nature. Nature is a vast, chaotic collection of shapes. You as an artist create configurations out of chaos" - Ansel Adams

Migration as a concept in biology can have many nuances. For example, the idea of Zugunruhe as a concept has been around since the 1700's. It describes the restlessness that birds feel when they know they should be migrating, what humans might call wanderlust. Many birds are traveling into our state right now, some will stop, others will continue south.

 

The warblers have been studied and have proteins in their eyes that help to perceive the magnetic flux lines that the earth has between its poles. When food becomes scarce, they begin to exhibit signs of restlessness called zugunruhe that presages these migrations. The longest migration ever is the Arctic tern that travels 90,000 miles each year from pole to pole.

Merlins are hunters of small birds such as sparrows and so they follow their prey as the migration heads south along the Rockies. Population dynamics, especially in invasive species, can be very important for study. The number of migrating birds are controlled by much more than their predators, but it can be an important factor.

Canada geese numbers have increased and changed their behavior due to adapting to humans. There is now one goose for ever ten people in the US.

While mallards are most common in New Mexico, this is actually a (mostly non-hybridized) Mexican duck, which is a native species that has shown slight declines in Central America.

Roadrunners are rare in the Corrales Bosque. This one was hunting lizards basking on fallen logs near Romero. Their expressive actions and relative fearlessness of humans make them instant crowd pleasers around people watchers.

Sparrows are much more generalist, so can find many types of food in a field, from seeds to insects. This flock seemed to be feeding on seeds after this field was mown, (probably in preparation for the arrival of sandhill cranes next month.)

Mowing ditches is important for communities. Access is difficult if the edges are overgrown, but the wildlife can be affected. Communities can fight over this if there are different priorities. This is the main reason the work is left to one entity (MRGCD) instead of public works, fire department, or groups such as Rio Grande Return.

An advantage of NOT cutting the vegetation at the interior drain is that diversity flourishes according to local conditions. Here, the grasses compete with the cattails for real estate. Many other plant species, including trees like cottonwoods, can grow in the confined conditions.

 

 With mowing, a single treatment is applied over a wide area. While this is efficient and cheapest for the whole village, the downside is that it allows only one type of growth. Usually weeds, because those plants are adapted to growing quickly after a disruption.

If the cuttings are not removed, the excess nutrients are released back into the water table and rivers. It is not practicable to remove the stems after mowing, but the plant material essentially changes the water; increasing the acidity, reducing the oxygen and causes changes we barely understand at the moment. Most weeds prefer acidic soil structures. Native desert plants are better at growing in alkaline clay soils and so can't compete.

Why domestic plants are not weeds, they also need soil amentdements. This fall, Corrales should see a bumper crop of fruits. While water  was low and heat high, most plants got enough and benefited from low pest loads.

Corrales used to be a large grower of wine grapes. Wine grapes tend to be smaller and have thick, tart, tannin rich skins. Floods and the prohibition almost eliminated the industry in the valley, but it clings on. New Mexico is middle of the pack in terms of state wine volumes, but shines in terms of history and varieties (if you can discount EVERYTHING planted since 1978 that is a french hybrid). Now the industry caters mostly to tourists during the balloon fiesta.

Buffalo, or stink gourds are a strange plant that dominates certain areas in the bosque. This plant has no edible purpose, but can be used in many unimportant ways. It is a fascinating plant on its own biological merits however. Squash plants use chemicals to deter some insects and encourage others that have adapted to their defenses. These interactions between insect and plant hormone mediators through terpenes is barely understood by biologists.

Russian olives provide cover and food for animals, while also choking out other vegetation and increasing fire risk in the bosque. While they don't provide perfect nutrition, it is enough to keep animals through the winter.

Of course, NOT cutting down plants along the ditches encourages the sunflowers and most forms of recreation such as bird watching, walking, and riding. The scenery in the summer and fall is important for those who live and visit here.

"Rio Grande Returns" works on removing invasive salt cedar in the new Harvey Jones Drainage Channel. Sediment coming down from the hills with the storm flows and the increased nutrients encourages generalist plants like those to bloom.

In theory, water flows one way into the Rio Grande, but things get complicated when the water meets the weeds, so to speak. This concrete channel is often used as a roadway into the bosque for off road vehicles.

 

 Recent high flows in the Rio Grande from the draw down of water in the El Vado dam (for repairs) along with high snow melt this year allowed a sand bar to build up at the mouth of the rivulet created by the treated sewer effluent from Rio Rancho. The water is currently backing up into the drainage area. It will be interesting to see what the increased water levels will do when the pressure eventually releases.

Dense plant cover benefits small animals such as this lizard. Animal populations should increase, having unpredictable effects on the other animals in the bosque.

The coyotes scat left as scent markers on the trails continue to show an almost exclusive diet of apples. This does not jive with most people's experience and/or perceptions of these canids, so tends to be ignored. Still, it is a fact that exists that coyotes like Corrales for its apples, not its chickens or small dogs.

Bullfrogs were reduced in numbers as the recent wild flucuations in water levels over the last two years killed large numbers of tadpoles. These tend to need to overwinter to grow into adults. The adults survive in beaver ponds at the north end of the village. The beavers build dams where the Russian olive overhang the banks of the lateral ditch.

Butterflies in Corrales seem to be hit or miss, in spite of Corrales being called "the place of butterflies" in the Keres langauage. This is a painted lady and it is the most widespread of butterfly species.

This long horn beetle has a mouthful of a name "Megacyllene snowi zuniana" it breeds on locust, but the adults also feed on goldenrod, those yellow sprays of herbs that dot the leafy verges.

Last year, the Cottonwood Leaf beetle was around in large numbers. This year their energy is spent and they can hardly be found. Population dynamics again, and is probably related to its strategy of laying large numbers of eggs at one time.

Semelparity in insects is the term where the insect reproduces once in it's lifetime. It actually is a very successful reproductive strategy for animals, and allows strange strategies for success. It is the reason for why these large beetles seem to be in such a frantic rush to breed in the fall.

The clown like antics of the ten lined june bugs also rushing around looking for females with those huge antennae is also motivated by semelparity.

 

These near indestructible conchuela stink bugs are seen more often in the fall. In areas of New Mexico that grows cotton, refugia areas of alfalfa are grown to harbor predators that feed on these insects.

This species is a damselfly genus known as a forktail. It can be pretty galling to find search results on the internet bringing up mythical dragon creatures instead of actual insects or birds. The colors on these creatures are impressive, cooler than any fake dragon.

Damselflies specialize in hunting small flying insects along small clear streams. They occur in great numbers in the Harvey Jones Bioswale.

The presence of these insects is actually a bad sign, as it shows the acidic, clear, warm water from the waste treatment plants is backing up into the bioswale because of sand berms along the river. The proliferation of small gnats is attracting and supporting these specialist gnat catchers.

Tiny butterflies, called skippers, tend to dominate the heavy foliage as the fall progresses. There are quite a few varieties and this is one of the more unusual ones.

We see the large velvet ants along the ditches in the summer. There are many other types that are less noticable, like this speces. These other velvet ant species (actually, a wasp) are prolific along exposed sandy soils near to the road on the Romero levee.

The domestic honeybees build or are provided with hives to produce honeycombs, most of the native bees are solitary and spend the night clinging to tall stems with their jaws. This bee hasn't been identified yet, but is clearly not a honeybee.

This is a leafcutter bee of some type, they are identified by the materials they use to build their solitary nests; mason-mud, resin-sap, carder-fibers, leafcutter-leaves

This is a bee fly of some type. Probably a Villa genus. They are rare visitors to porch lights in the fall, but there are so many species it is hard to keep track, unless you are a big fan of this sort of thing.

Checkered skippers are usually very active, but I can still usually get pretty close to take a photograph. This one was having some trouble due to the wind from the developing rainstorm.

Death seems to be a common feature in wild animals as the seasons change. The weaker of the species, or just those that are unlucky, perish , with or without passing their genes to the next generations. Here, the fish have simply run out of room and now feed the numerous craydads and bacteria in those pools that remain.

Many things could have killed this gopher, maybe even one of it's own kind (Botta's pocket gopher are very intolerant of their own species). It does give me a chance to show those impressive digging claws, however.

 

I'm still not sure what this bat is, but I know it is the mouse eared family, and that is enough for me, for now. Bats are the only animal other than birds to develop powered flight, and they seem so clumsy at it, yet on closer examination their adaptions are superhuman, like their echolocation skills. 

 

    Somehow, these, and the other animals have managed to work within their biological history to adapt and overcome all chaotic challenges. Biology would say it is simply luck exposed to terminal failures over long periods of time (evolution). Whether Ansel's "artist" was involved or not, the impressions these animals leave on the canvas of experience are valuable for the hints of the "universal laws" that the philosopher Kant alludes to in the opening paragraph.