Corrales is constantly going through changes as the seasons cycle from long to short days and back again. Not all the things we see are obvious. The quiescent phase before the activity of summer is important, a sort of staging area for the main event.
Birds have long ago converted their feathers into far more than just devices for flying and keeping warm. This heron is not yet molted into the finery it will have later during the breeding season. Water birds at this elevation have to deal with a lot of wear and tear on those vital feathers from aridity, high pH, and UV exposure. This is part of the reason why many migrating species don't stay here long. This heron will change it's appearance around August and be ready for courtship after that. But it will never lose more than 1 or 2 wing feathers at a time so stays airworthy if a little bedraggled.
Turkeys are sort of different. Their feathers are much more durable. The melanin that makes them black is actually a strengthening pigment. Those beautiful iridescent body feathers are being replaced now to look their best for breeding season which is almost year round. They are quite explosive fliers but have no endurance, helpful for a bird that roosts in trees each night but doesn't migrate. That white meat found on the thanksgiving table is usually the big muscles used to power their short but strong wings.
January is when the great horned owls are beginning to figure out their nesting arrangements. You may notice them hooting in the evenings as groups define their boundaries prior to egg laying.
Woodpeckers are a genus of bird that has learnt new ways to find food. Red shafted flickers are insectivores that look for food mostly on the ground, so they disappear when the ground is frozen. They eat ants, easy to find but not as nutritious.
True woodpeckers are able to stay in Corrales year round as their food doesn't freeze or hide underground. Actually it becomes easier to find as the dead wet wood flakes off. Foraging activity goes still go way down and they become far less noticeable until breeding season comes around again.
Beavers are plentiful around the Rio Grande and they leave a lot of evidence such as this tree stump. They feed exclusively on the thin, living layer of sugar just under the tough bark and constantly grind down their teeth by felling young cottonwoods. Usually to feed on the smaller upper branches. Beavers do still build dams, but this far south can also be found in tunnels dug into the side of rivers.
This snail is
Physella acuta, found at the Harvey Jones outflow, which is basically the effluent from Rio Rancho wastewater. The heavy nitrate load and low sediment feeds duckweed and looks very different than the usual muddy, alkaline river water, creating the ideal environment for freshwater snails which would otherwise be found in areas much more upstream at higher elevation like Taos.
Treated wastewater is usually frost free and stays warm most of the winter. This allows many creatures such as frogs and leeches to thrive. However the oxygen concentrations are low due to the abundant bacteria so there are relatively few fish, thankfully, as many people still flush store bought fish down the toilet.
Asiatic clams are quite abundant in the river and are increasing their range and density since they were first discovered in the 1980's. Native clams long ago became scarce during to changing river conditions. How this will affect future ecosystems is very much unknown.
This is a predatory nymph from a darner. They can spend several years existing aquatically before developing into a flying, reproductive form. They are often found hiding under rocks to avoid being eating by roosting birds such as ducks, geese, gulls or cranes.
The common name for this insect is "bloodworm" but is is actually an insect, with a segmented body and small prolegs. Eventually they become a midge, flying in large clouds about the water in the winter.
Not all fungus are the same and this is a bit of an unusual one. It has an inverted mushroom cap that holds a spore body in a small cup. This is designed for a raindrop to land on it and propel the "egg" several feet away, allowing fungi to develop on new substrate.
Plants don't have feathers like a bird, but they have developed trichomes which serve a very closely related purpose. A dense wooly coat of whiskers help this young plant moderate the humidity and temperature around the new cells. Ice damages cell walls and is one reason why young shoots are sweet, the sugar reduces the temperature at which damaging ice needle crystals form.
Ice forms a multitude of shapes from plates to needles, but the basic design is a hexagon. In a cold. moist atmosphere water solidified fleetingly on the surface of the hexagon to form these almost perfect six pointed stars.
Brassica plants like this London rocket reproduce quickly from small seeds. The cold inactivates the flowering inhibitor enzymes and the almost explode from the ground is bright green splashes to seed and flower before anything else. If they then die due to unfavorable conditions later, then their progeny will remain dormant in the ground until the next hard freeze releases their restraints again. Thee flowers can self fertilize if insects do not appear.
The cold snap affects other animals differently. This small songbird is a seed eater and is waiting for the weather to warm up to flying temperature while fluffed up feathers keep it cozy
Ice releases latent heat as it cools. Counterintuitively, as long as water is continuously freezing, the temperature of the leaves stays at freezing but doesn't drop further. This protects the leaves if they contains a bit of sugar in solution. This is how shoots can survive a snap frost, but will wilt if the thermometer drops too far, or too often.
Many insects, like this Arizona Black hole spider will move into the house to keep active in a cold spell. Encounters with humans are always worse for them than you. Many species, from mosquitos to wasps and hummingbirds are actively evolving to adapt to human conditions and will continue to do so into the foreseeable future.
How the world changes by season is very predictable, but the future has many effects caused by humans that are less murky such as climate change. Hopefully we can all learn to adjust for the inevitable that comes with these changes.
