Celebrate

 "La Nature est un temple où de vivants piliers
Laissent parfois sortir de confuses paroles;
L'homme y passe à travers des forêts de symboles
Qui l'observent avec des regards familiers." 

    Baudelaire

French poetry can seem perverse and confusing, but for those with perseverance the themes can really hit home. Charles Baudelaire was very contrary, but his themes of nature as a teacher can seem very native to the average Correleño who visits the outdoors even once in a while. Though few of us are in the Bosque during the night, or see many dead animals, those things are still a part of what shapes all of our experiences of Nature and this is what French poets like Baudelaire and other symbolists talk about.

Baudelaire published his book of poetry around 1860 and later was found guilty of offending public morals with his work. While he was acclaimed as a reputable art critic, he was always a tragic figure. In the same way, this porcupine is a beautiful specimen, and I was able to get some very good pictures of it. Sadly this was because it had been hit by a car and killed on the side of the road. It appeared to be holding a posy of bright brown/red Chinese pistache seeds.

 

 When ugliness and beauty co-exist, how are we to appreciate it? Also, there is a deeper story to tell. The bosque is always host to trees that don't stay in the garden boundaries or a garden catalogue. This is a beautiful beetle called Magacyllene robiniae. It is found with the black locust tree that usually exists east of the Mississippi but has been transplanted mostly in Albuquerque along the river. The wood is amazingly rot resistant and the tree never really dies, regenerating by suckers underground.

At the other end of the spectrum, here is a young southwestern fence lizard's tail poking out from a fissure in the fibrous bark of the Fremont Cottonwood. Young lizards overwinter in deep cracks and most should survive the cold until next spring. Unless they move, you will never know they are there. The widespread removal of mature cottonwood trees to prevent damage has an affect on all levels of the ecosystem.

"Who dare assign to art the sterile function of imitating nature?" Baudelaire.

The open, bright yellow and purple flowers of fall seem to have a very different function than those of spring or summer. These aster flowers are sturdy, and much larger. They seem to encourage insect meetings, much like a dance floor. Look closely and you can see a crab spider lying in ambush for a small fly. Both insect and arachnid might conceivably help pollinate this compound flower.

Many small birds are moving to what I call the starvation food sources. Seeds of the russian olive and others are edible but not highly nutritious. The birds can feed at bird feeders, or spend more time foraging naturally. The big advantage is the natural behavior encourages them to pair bond and also jostle and argue. Birds have complicated behavior that adapts them to do things like develop territories and migrate, a big part of this is learning when to flock and when to disperse. This is why ducks and pigeons can be domesticated, but sparrows and sand hill cranes cannot. Those birds just don't have the right instincts for crowding in stressful situations that the mallard and pigeon seem to be able to handle.

"Seeing you so, my beautiful dainty one, your feet in the mire and your moist eyes turned to the sky, as though to demand a king, one would say indeed: a young frog invoking the ideal. " Baudelaire

The story seems to be that there was once a thought in the 1930's that Amercians were ready for frogs legs. The biggest frogs were bullfrogs from America's South-eastern states. The idea never got past the franchise step as the great depression was ending, but the bullfrogs are still here. They can be found basically anywhere there is permanent water. Some specimens in the Gila do grow to quite impressive sizes because this benefits the biggest fish in a shrinking pond, so to speak.

Wasps are typical carnivore insects in that they feed on pollen and sugars but can also digest proteins, espcially for feeding to larva. They have adapted well to living near to human habitation but are incredibly adaptable.

Mosquitos have out manoevered all of humanities attempts at elimination. The irony is that the blood sucking is simply a means to collect proteins needed to produce egg cases. Their infection risks are likewise simply the side effect of certain parasites being able to invade the salivary glands of this insect as a means to get a free ride.

Yellow fever mosquitos like this one have come up with evolutions that allows them to also adapt to anthropomorphic ecosystem changes. They survive over the winter by breeding in buried pipes and inside houses. The larva is apparently capable of living in damp ground instead of standing water, opening new niche ecosystems for the species.

"Who would you be, I wonder, by those marks

If I had moths to friend as I have flowers?"    Robert Frost

It took a while, but I was able to narrow this down to Frederickia albidula. a pretty rare moth. Problem solving is only satisfying if one is able to solve, but moths are often tricky for beginners to figure out, in spite of the amazing resources now available online. I particularly recommend bugguide.net

"this carnival where many illustrious hearts,
Like butterflies, wander flamboyantly" Baudelaire

The smaller butterflies often have the small heart shape on the trailing edges of their wings. Its more prominent in the smaller skippers. This is the Dainty Sulphur, the english spelling is correct, only in this case. These butterflies can't survive the winter no are not adapted for migration, only flying a few inches above the ground. In the autumn, the outer wings are usually more dark green, apparently related to the caterpillers being exposed to less sunlight each day.

The number of generations produced in a season is called voltinism and is variable depending on length of day, temperature and other factors. This moth is still undetermined, but you can tell from the "fur" behind the head and the thick flight muscles that this a more cold hardy species of lepidoptera. 

"a silent horde of loathsome spiders

Comes to spin their webs in the depths of our brains,
All at once the bells leap with rage
And hurl a frightful roar at heaven" Baudelaire

Pretty much sums up most people's experiences of spiders. Here is a Pholcus phalangioides eating a elm seed bug. It is not the harvestman spider, commonly called daddy long legs. this spider prefers warm indoor cellars. often called cellar spiders. They don't travel much, creating a lot of genetic drift due to the founder effect between different population loci. Their locations depend on human habitation; they are a synanthrope. They are a good sign if you dont like spiders and they actively hunt other spider species inside dwellings and control their own numbers by cannibalism. Their bites are of absolutely no effect on humans, and the venom is weak even on insects.

 

 "He goes, transforming the paving stones into islands,

Quenching the thirst of every creature,
And everywhere coloring nature red." Baudelaire

If you look closely, you can see that there is three different colors of stems on the ever present pigweeds. Some are green, others yellow, and some are red. Like traffic lights these colors mean specific things. Not all weeds are growing the same way. The green ones are still growing and photsynthezing, still investing energy into their seeds. The yellow ones are dormant and shed their seeds, ready for the next year. The red ones are preparing to enter senescense and release anthrocyanins more likely betalains) which are red colored to protect cells from light, bacterial and other damage during periods of high free radical activity. Short version big picture concept; its a kind of sunscreen.

"
"While an odour of graves through the darkness spreads,
And on the swamp's margin, my timid foot treads

Upon slimy snails, and on unseen toads."    

Baudelaire

Dark skies are an amazing benefit of living rural. Rare and fleeting to most of us who can't camp every week-end. It is a thrill to walk in the bosque at dusk and see a huge woodhouse toad sitting on the trail in the silence. Even in daylight hours when the spooks are vanishing, there is always plenty of evidence of activites from the many footsteps in the dry dust, the numerous scat piles from coyotes, or the wet marks where the beaver have exited the ditches. 

"

“I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on,
The windows and the stars illumined, one by one," Baudelaire"

The wide open of the huge starry sky is sadly not as dark as it could be. While New Mexico has some of the best dark skies in the country, the view is by no means pristine. Still, there are miracles up there from the recent asteroid, to the pink glow of the northern lights. To say nothing of the ancient light of the twinkling stars themselves.

As Corrales gets ready to welcome the sandhill cranes back into the fields I appreciate the flocks of everything from ducks to the standard Canada geese. I know that they will one day be gone either in the Summer blaze or as the climate changes and sadly that could be in my lifetime. The term "future shock" was developed in the 1960's to describe change happeing to quickly to adapt to. Hopefully the bucolic charm of Corrales can survive the sudden changes and threats of modernity. The poet Baudelaire observed the darker side of Paris during a period of modernisation in the 1850's, what would he think about the changes brought to the wildlife of Corrales as it creaks under the strain of being loved to death?