Forage

 

And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
‘And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love

William Blake 

There is a lot to see in nature. There is even more not seen. This blog is trying to look at things a bit more deeper than the average person might.

 

 The world of nature exists both beneath our feet and into the hours of darkness. These two places are almost as alien to humans as the surface of Mars. Many creatures are found here that have a lot to teach to those who can see. The woodhouse toad is a common enough animal, often found in pipes and culverts around Corrales in the humid summer twilight hours.

 

Although quite common, most people will never see, or recognise a spadefoot toad. They only leave the soil for a few days each year to feed or mate on warm, monsoon nights. This rarity is what makes them so valuable. They appear to go against everything that should make an amphibian successful.

 

New Mexico exists at the end of a chain of western mountains that act as a corridor for insects and birds. These animals use the landmarks as navigation aids. The diverse ecosystems allowed by topography help provide sites for food, shelter and just resting places. The winds allow easier flying along the ridges. This explains why many of Corrales butterflies seem to visit for short periods here, they are usually just passing through. Here is a chequered white feeding on a wild licorice plant.

 

 Mourning cloaks seem to be quite a tough butterfly that is drab unless you get close to the vivid blue spots. They are long distance fliers and because they hibernate as adults they can be found over a wide range of temperatures than other insects

 

Swallowtails can be found during the hottest temperatures in Corrales. They have distinctive "tails" that distract predators into mistaking the tail for the more vulnerable head. Swallowtails in the tropics do not migrate, but those in more northern latitudes like New Mexico often travel to more favorable sites if necessary.

Summer is the season of fecundity. While many birds produce only one brood, others keep popping out more eggs for as long as they can. This clear ring of pecked shells shows a successful hatching.

While our cicadas are nothing like the super broods occurring further East, there is certainly a hatching. They insects spend most of their lives chewing on tough underground roots before emerging and turning into winged insects with vocal cords that can match the sounds of lawnmowers.

Some plants are just designed to be disliked. The puncture vine thrives by being persecuted. First found in the US in 1938 in Yellowstone county, Montana it is now naturalized, mostly by being perfectly adapted to western US and also impossible to remove. This plant is excellent at annoying your neighbors who might be more picky about their gardening. It has an unusual reputation for being a fertility enhancer for both men and women. There is absolutely no empirical evidence to back this up. I still think the small short lived flowers are quite pretty, though.

 

 The fetid gourd is a native species that is notable for having an amazingly long tap root more like those of a tree. While wild miraculous uses are promised for this plant, in this case they actually have some basis in fact. There used to be some cultivation in Lebanon of some seeds collected form Texas but current sleuthing suggests this was likely a Ford Foundation grant scheme that went nowhere.

Cattails are designed by nature to spread rapidly but also colonize new areas. Each stalk has both male and female flowers, with the pollen clouds above become a spike as the seeds mature into the brown "corndog" later in the year.

 

 Datura flowers are a bitter, poisonous plant that is vital to the ecology of several insects including tortoise beetles and sphinx moths. Also known as moon flowers due to the fact they open at night and are far more visible in the moonlight.

 

 Wild irises grow well in the Jemez mountains. They thrive in wetland meadows where the drainage and browsing of animals prevents tree growth. They can be found in shaded parts of Corrales dainage channels, too. Irises have been grown for ornamental reasons in Europe since the 16th century, but their history goes back to at least 2000BC in Crete.

 

Chicory flowers are breath-takingly beautiful and ephemeral. This weird dandelion species has been used for everything from coffee substitute, to a sweetener, and endives. I can't pretend I understand the motivations of gardeners and gourmands, but I can appreciate that they certainly are dedicated to their different causes!

 

 Corrales has an abundance of wild borne seeds. From willows, dandelions, cattails, elms and the ubiquitous cottonwoods. I seem to be one of the only ones who think the modified trichomes, and associated specialized annulus formed by the fibers are a big deal. Cotton and willows appear to have developed the same structures completely independently by responding to the same environmental dispersal cues.

 

 Humans lately do not seem to be trending much towards patience and understanding. Fruit trees are a quick fix towards all the latest buzzwords of sustainability, efficiency and diversity. Silvaculture is a time consuming and economically risky enterprise when done for ecological or household reasons. Apricots produce fruit early in the season, but the vast majority will simply rot on the ground. However, the presence of mulberry scat shows that the coyotes in Corrales are at lest interested in the fruit, and these canids have a well known sweet tooth.

 

I suspect fruit trees would make a quick disappearance if it was realized that there are other mammals who also have a taste for easily found fruit. This long distance picture shows a black bear feeding on grass shoots in a wetland meadow in the Jemez mountains. Luckily these animals are not often seen in Corrales.

  

Globe mallow flowers can often be found to contain a sleeping native bee inside. Diadasia diminuta. Many bees sleep on or near to the flowers they pollinate, but they usually just clamp their jaws on a leaf in wet or cold weather. This symbiotic relationship appears to be poorly studied, but often observed.

Chironomus genus of insects feed and live in the oxygen poor waters of stagnant ditches where they live in excavated tubes. The larva are usually bright red due to the pigments they use to maximize respiration. This gives the family the normal name of "bloodworms". Their ceaseless motions to fan oxygenated water to their gills are very alluring to the many small fish that can be found in their waters.

Crab spiders are usually ambush specialists. but there is an example of a running crab spider of which there are about 500 species. The front pair of legs are oriented sideways giving them a more crab like appearance. They don't make webs but actively hunt for small insects, usually on the outsides of buildings.

Antlions are another of those insects that occupy a totally different niche when they are ready to reproduce. Often the winged adults form when there has been a light rain, which ruins the dusty pit traps of the juveniles. The adults live for about a month on nectar and pollen.

The strawberry root weevil is found on many other plants, but the strawberry farmers got to name it first. No male specimen has ever been observed and the species reproduces by parthenogenesis. Humans take a personal interest in insects that affect profits, and this insect has been studied since the earliest times of biology, classified in 1758.

Lined June beetles. While there are a few about, their numbers are expected to explode around the end of next month. These are super clumsy fliers and often crash into people's faces. When the adults emerge, they have only a few weeks to reproduce before they die. Most of their life cycle is as a grub living on organic detritus and roots. The winged males simply have no attention to anything other than locating females.

 

Katydid are fully grown by late summer. Their chorus is then added to the other assorted crickets and singing insects. The adults are very large for insects growing over 2 inches in length. This one still has to grow into it's legs.

 

 Early in the season, spiders have the upper hand at night, but as temperatures rise, ants become the dominate night insects in Corrales and the spiders become rarer and often begin to forage during the day. Here is a Hogna Carolinensis. The bumps on the back are baby spiderlings. These large spiders use burrows as a way to control the often large changes in their environmental temperatures. They often are found near to human habitation, feeding on cockroaches.

 

Elm seed bugs are still prevalent especially in cracks around doors and windows. No matter what people do, their numbers are only controlled by the mating conditions, and outside temperatures. Here is a small group disrupting in their overwintering site in the corner of a door. 

Many animals rely on human activity to survive, often even thriving in their structures. The ones we see today are often the ones who have adapted to our rules, surviving chemicals, vehicles, pets, and housing to live along side us. They don't really need to accommodate humans anymore. Of course, the ones we should worry about are those animals and insects that are not adjusting fast enough, or are simply incompatible with humans. Can anyone imagine living with a black bear, or cougar in their backyard?

Human activity extends even to the stratosphere above, while increased carbon emissions are present in every breath taken or ray of sunshine that falls on our skins. In a sense the animals we choose to live with reflect those who can tolerate us. Next time we reach for the phone to call an exterminator or weed removal service we could probably spend a second thinking about those neighbors we chose to live in our houses.