Dry

 

“Autumn wins you best by this, its mute appeal to sympathy for its decay.”- Robert Browning

All seasons have a color. Fall colors are the most spectacular, as the oranges, yellows, and browns soften and mellow everything as greens fade away to be replaced by a different, but ephemeral landscape. Humans could do well to notice and maybe apply the nuances of this change.

Snakes are always around us, but the fall is when they can often be the easiest to see. They disappear quickly as urbanization increases, so are special in places under threat, such as Corrales. This common snake is the hognose. It is a small and very mellow snake that hunts the fallen leaves for the juvenile toads when the day's temperatures are warm enough.

I have talked before about the wide range of caterpillars that there are in the bosque. These web worms are another strange one that live communally underneath a canopy of silk, for protection. These insects used to be treated very harshly with gasoline, pruning saws and insecticides. They persisted and more damage was done to the trees by the gardeners than by the insects. Another way to look at them is that they can only exist in a thriving old growth forest. So their existence proves the health of the wildness that we all seek in our souls when we come into Corrales.

This is a juvenile elm seed bug. It is interesting because this insect, like humans, grow from small adult forms into large adult forms. This is termed direct development. Butterflies and moths grow from eggs as caterpillars and then after a pupae stage become winged insects completely different in form and function from the juveniles in a different process called complete metamorphosis. This is a fascinating area of study because, for example, direct development is common in species experiencing adaptive radiation or coping with climate change. Many animals slowly switch from one growth type to the other, such as sharks that have live young, frogs that hatch as full frogs from eggs, snakes whose eggs can hatch inside the mother, or paedomorphosis in salamanders and even dogs.

In the fall, many insects are facing new changes, such as colder mornings. Stresses in animals increases the susceptibility of infections and birth defects. Something caused this anglewing katydid to be deformed. Even though the hindwings are almost normal, the hemelytra, or wing coverings meant this insect soon died. These insects are also able to shed their back legs, and this one also appears to be missing a hopping leg.

Fall is a season of rodent sightings. There is a sizable population of muskrats south of Alameda along the irrigation ditches where the best food sources are in the cattails and other grasses. They can be very shy, but are not beavers. This one is moving into new digs, because the lowered irrigation level has allowed more real estate to become available.

The human bridges crossing the Rio Grande are habitats perfect for many species. Here are the nests of the summer swallows. Each pot was created by a bird flying back from the muddy river with hundreds of beakfuls of mud, The structure gives perfect protection from invading rodents and cats. Pigeons and bats also hide and breed in the bridge crevices.

I have no idea what this apparent insect egg case might be. They occur in prolific numbers along the bridge posts and I look forward to learning a lot more about them in the future...once someone gives me a hint at identification.

Familiarity breeds contempt, and I am so used to seeing these Say's phoebe, that their return was almost unnoticed. There is always one perched over the water waiting to see a invisible winged insect to pounce on. Soon, the robins, towhee, flickers, and other cold weather birds will be back.

This lucky fish was rescued from a shrinking pool and returned to a backwater of the Rio grande. I'm not sure what species it is, maybe a shiner?

The hummingbirds are still around as the hot weather delays their need to continue further south into the tropics. Their presence makes life difficult for the other birds that have to deal with hummingbird dive bombing harassments.

This is an odd black widow, where the red hour glass pattern has been copied and repeated onto the dorsum of the thorax. I am assured this is indeed a black widow, but I am not yet fully convinced.

With the end of the irrigation season, the spigots have been turned off and the whole man-made structure of ditches have run dry. Here and there, the beaver dams have allowed water to remain and these have developed their own ecology as the fish and amphibians collect in the shallow pools that remain.

Water fowl have begun to return to Corrales from further north, ducks as well as the more numerous Canada geese. They are looking for water; not to drink, but as refuges from predators that can't float as well as they can. Here the Canada geese are looking over their options, but all so far have only rested for a day before continuing south to the extensive protected wetlands available at places such as Sevilleta and Bosque Del Apache

This appears to be darkling beetle munching on a Virginia tiger moth caterpillar. I don't have any context for this picture. The caterpillar is not toxic or venomous, but while the beetles are scavengers, they should be vegetarians...

While woodpeckers are supposed to be here year round, I notice the suet feeders usually go up in the fall around the village as these, and the related flickers move in.

 

 By all accounts, the fruit harvest in New Mexico is going to be bountiful. Crab apples are related to the edible fruits, but have much less sugar. They seem to do well as an ornamental as well, and feed a wide variety of animals

Grey squirrels should be doing well with the large numbers of sunflower plants dropping their small seeds along the ditches. These animals have done very well by humans, partly because they have much fewer predators now, but also because their ability to eat anything including eggs and tadpoles. Unlike birds, these mammals will be able to glean the sees once the plants have been mown down and left to rot.

The large and impressive webs of the garden spiders shine well in the oblique morning sunlight. The physics behind spider silk is complex, nuanced and not that well understood, but it involves spinnerets and post extrusion processing.

Grasshoppers are perfectly designed for a life in vertically oriented plant stems. Now is their mating season, and the eggs will remain dormant in the soil over the winter. The cold evenings slow them down enough that they can be great food sources for most birds, and indeed almost any critter can eat them. But humans should take the prickly back legs off first. Those stiff spines on the legs serve the purpose of catching in our soft throats if they are swallowed the wrong way, but luckily not many people try to eat them.

The moth at the top of this picture is a Homoeosoma ellectellum these moths are having a bumper year and there are plenty of seeds for them to feed on. The other, bigger moth is likely feeding on pollen. These large flower pads are often a meeting place for many insect species, kind of like a communal marketplace and nightclub for the insect world.

Every dead animal in the bosque often has a interesting story surrounding them. This mouse is out in the open because of recent ditch mowing activity has forced a migration from the resultant loss of  plant cover. How this particular mouse died, I don't know but i would guess it was hit by flying plant stems thrown out by the mowing blades.

The MRGCD is responsible for mowing the ditches around Corrales and this machine does the majority of that work. The population pays around 6 mills to fund MRGCD in its activities which is pretty low as a national average, but it all depends on what you get for the money.

    There are many reasons to mow the wild plants, and there are many thorny issues that it brings up (pun intended). As always. some creatures benefit from the mowing (like coyotes that catch the exposed mice) and others that lose out (such as the small passerine birds in the midst of annual migrations). 

    The biggest of those questions is why have wetlands in the interior drain at all? It has value to some people, but can you quantify it? What is the soul of Corrales worth to all the people? The ditch no longer drains the fields, but people also don't depend on the produce of the land as much. Are tarmac roads and fire hydrants worth more than mud, plants, insects, birds, and animals? The final answer is probably going to be depressing.

    Wetlands are rare and fragmented, and the problem is getting worse as the need for wetlands becomes more apparent. The value of land development becomes higher as more people make do with less space. How many people can look at this picture of cattail fluff and see shelter, food and aesthetic beauty for both humans and the animals in our environment, instead of a tiktok video on "wild corn dogs"?

    We are in the midst of constant evolution of the value of nature. Right now there is a strange alliance of developers and ecologists that causes problems because of the compromises forced on them. Like the Alameda 2nd street drain trail, which is horrifying outcome and does not bode well for the future of the Corrales interior drain. 

As our space decays naturally we have a choice to manage it through those changes, or to redesign it to better fit the needs of the future. The needs of our living spaces are not best met by asphalt, fire hydrants, pesticides, and flat surfaces if that means less nature. Our community decays if there is less wild.