Adage

 "Nature is not a place to visit. It is home." - Gary Snyder

As summer moves into fall, the creatures that live in the bosque change. The prevalence of scales and chitin has changed into fur and feathers. Leaves disintegrate and are replaced by blades of grass across the ground.

 

 Cranes are rather odd birds in that their ideal landscape is one created by farmers. These birds prefer a half harvested field with corn that has been knocked over by winds. They like wide open spaces full of corn kernels and churned up earth that exposes roots and cold stunned insects.

 

Right now the cranes are heading further south to the fields of Bosque Del Apache that have the wide open spaces, and custom field management designed to their unique way of life. Mostly this involves room to be cranes away from the weird noises, sights and sounds of humans. However, they do migrate up and down the river valley, and Corrales fields tempt them with things such as apple pomace, open grass fields, and corn handouts. These are still wild birds however, so it takes a few weeks for them to acclimatize to the sheer density of human activity found here.

 

This flock of crows do a very similar thing. For them the attraction is the local landfill, and the shopping mall roof tops and dumpsters that provide food for a large number of birds. The city also is a reliable source of heat in the cold winter. Right now the flocks of crows are small and transitory, but in a few months there will be flocks that number in the hundreds of individuals close to the Alameda bridge each evening just after sunset.

 

 Far more solitary in nature are the red shafted flickers. Like most birds, they have a strict schedule starting at dawn where they preen in the upper branches of trees as they let the first sun's rays warm them up. They use this time to survey the social landscape by listening to birdsong and then take off for a period of foraging and exploration according to what they learn, their whim, or experience.

 

 The actual process of molting is apparently quite complicated. This is the tail feather of a red shafted flicker juvenile in second molt. The vane is asymmetrical with a tufted base. While the pigment color comes from their diet, how that color is expressed in the feather is modified by metabolism and that is specifically why the feather color is correlated to breeding success.

 

 This is a red breasted nuthatch. Corrales mostly has the more widespread white breasted variety, which is easily found at the less busy bird feeders. They have small bills, but they use these well by wedging seeds into wood cracks to hammer them open.

 

    A very different feeding strategy is used by the towhee. This noisy, brash bird rummages loudly through leaf litter to uncover insect larva hiding in the undergrowth.

 

 Euxoa genus. Moths do not get nearly the proper props for the benefits they bring to an ecosystem. Its not even that they are particularly ugly or boring. Butterflies just have the better PR campaign system, obviously.

 

Tiger swallowtails are a big butterfly we can sometimes see in the Bosque, but no one is ever going to put a moth on a balloon. Why an insect has to look like a flower to be appreciated is something I probably will never understand.

 

Of course, with the number of insects that live with us on Earth, it's no surprise that most of them will go unnoticed. This moth rolls its wings up like the sail on a sailing ship, but no one seems sure why.

Sadly, most people know the silverfish from a cameo appearance on the video game "Minecraft". These impressive insects were a much worse pest back  in the days when they would feed on the starchy glues found in wallpaper, books, and even the gypsum of the walls themselves. If water is available they can live for years without eating. They can shed their skin at will, so they can slip out of any spider web. There isn't much they can't digest, such as cardboard. They can probably feed on human dander, but that appears to never have been looked into.

Oak trees are famous in Europe for being large, and tough. In the southwest, they tend to be much smaller and found at high altitudes. Burr oaks are actually amazingly well adapted to dry climates, but only thrive where their slow growth is not a handicap to becoming shaded but trees adapted to human destruction, like elms. The study of Quercus trees is pretty complex especially at the DNA level. Humans once relied on this species a lot, back when they were much more common.

People sure have a strange idea of recreation. The clear ditch is Corrales is now dry due a combination of events related to maintenance backlogs. Someone drove down into it in their off road recreation vehicle. The problem is that the water table is just below the surface and they became stuck at a low spot in thick mud and had to be winched out by a partner vehicle. Incidentally, theses vehicles are not allowed in the bosque, let alone the ditch.

The cooler months are not supposed to be a time to find lizards. There are plenty of them, and they are often much easier to catch in the early mornings and evenings as they become more sluggish. This common fence lizard was simply picked up when it got caught under a cold hosepipe stream.

 

 Bottas pocket gopher are active at the surface of their burrows. Apparently collecting leaves, they also seem to be digging more surface tunnels and gorging on plant roots (usually treasured garden plants) because these are rich in nutrients in preparation for the winter.

Coyotes feed on many things, and try as I might, no one seems to believe they have a largely vegetarian diet based on their scat marks. They seem very interested in the arriving cranes, but that is also their usual curious natures, along with their appetites changing with the seasons as fruits become harder to find.

Plants kill off their leaves by the process of abscission. The cooler temperatures reduce the production of a growth hormone called auxin. This causes leaves to break off at special abscission zones and the whole process is amazingly complex and carefully orchestrated.

 

 Of course, not all plants follow the same script in the winter. There are many plants, like this domestic gourd that choose to bloom in the fall. This yellow is not from the destruction of green leaves, but the flowers looking for pollination. Flies are insects that are active long into the fall and serve as pollinators for many cool weather plants.

The way we look at the world can be very important. This is a view of the eclipse though a sun filter. It was an awesome sight (honest)

The moon is still the same size, but seems a lot bigger with not being compared to the sun. Of course, the moon is only visible because of the sun. Conversely, no one looks at the sun unless the moon (or earth) is in the way. What we pay attention to, and why, is important. Deep ecology is a philosophy espoused (sort of) by Gary Synder. It is in contrast to the utilitarian philosophy most people have when considering nature. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the idea that something should have a useful purpose, but it also doesn't have much to recommend it.

However, history of the 1960's showed humans the fragility of earth once they had a view of it from the moon. Dubbed the famous "Earthrise" photograph, it drove home the idea that this planet is fragile and small. While climate change is a new clarion call, the ecological issues sound familiar to some of us who can learn from recent history. Hopefully we can learn how to be stewards to our home before it is changed for the worse.