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Thr, 3&6 Mar, 2018 walking south from Bridge St, partly-cloudy, windy, 60s


    A pair of mallards is back home and Erodium cicutarium (Red stemmed filaree) is blooming all over the place not just snuggled next to heat storing structures. q.v. feb ABJ Once more winter dormant life is stirring in the Gallinas River Park.

On these first couple of walks in March I have come up with a plan to produce a mosaic of the initial awakening of this land I walk, I will take numerous photos of this rebirth, which I will reduce to form my tesserae, We will see, I maybe somewhat imperfectly due to my continuing eye problems. Let me get through March

Thr, 8 Mar, 2018 walking south

    As usual I see ravens, crows, Rock and Collared Doves, House Sparrows and still around Dark-eyed Juncos. And just back in town one Great-tailed Grackle.

I head down to the banks of the much diminished river to take a closer look. Beneath the reflection of the of the blue sky I see the green of the algae that permeates the slow running waters. In still shallow water are found strange mesa-like formations reaching from the bottom of the river or pool to the surface of the water. The growth of the Watercress is well advanced and that of Speedwell is just starting up.

    As I slowly advance along the west bank scurrying before me though and into the prostrate dead grass are a multitude of little black spiders recently escaped from their confining eggs ready to get on with life. What do they eat? There are also recently hatched a multitude of gnats and I am sure many unseen insects but I assume their first meals were their siblings, a spider custom.

Sat, 10/mar/2018, 60s, clear blue sky, light breeze, heading north from bridge

    I spy a shrub in leaf, ravens doing pair aereo-acrobatics, love is in the air sky blue azure, a magpie, a hawk pursued out of their nesting territory by a pair of anxious crows...

time to return home to a grilled pork sandwich with tomato and feta side of broccoli salad, downhill till el rio, its time to see the emerging mourning cloaks mourning for whom? those hibernating cloaks who didnt make it? found in their snug little crevices by a nosy hungry bird? whoa look at that fluttery shadow just there, looks like it might belong to a butterfly behind me, no, no ones there, wait here she comes again, isnt that nice she settles just there for her photo, open your wings a little for to see your yellow trim, thanks, bye hope you find an injured tree branch for a succulent sap snack...

[what do you expect? ive been reading Joyce]

Sat, 17 Mar a bright sunny warm day, Spring, Primavera !

    As I set out from home on my walk I notice the garden perennials are doing well, Viper grass and dandelion are blooming, the peach trees are already shedding their petals like pink snow, although the satisfying loud buzzing of the many kinds of bees is missing (not unusual here as those non-native peaches are often blooming too early) hence no fertilization, no peaches.

At the river I delight in the beautiful bright light playing upon the the water and the branchlets of the stream-side Narrow-leafed Cottonwoods, a tree shadowed pond reflects the surrounding trees and enveloping blue sky but looking past the reflection with a polarizing filter one sees the green algae bloom of the deep still waters. Farther down stream in the shallows the Speedwell is well into its growth. I have seen my first Chipping Sparrow with about a half dozen others and Ravens soaring on the wind as they get the kinks out from sitting on the nest.

Thr, 22 Mar
    Let us see what we can find in the Gallinas watery world south of Bridge St while we still have flowing water, still no precipitation since October. Ah! There's Ratty (I call all muskrats Ratty from a favorite childhood book The Wind in the Willows) on his way to the under water entrance to his burrow with a load of fresh grasses and on the south side of the first foot bridge a Mallard drake entering the reflected cottonwoods. The Mallard hen sits on the bank a bit farther down. Down by the shallows the spiders are fewer and larger then when I first saw them on the 8th and Green grow the Sedges, Oh! and upon the flood plain the gophers have been busy turning the earth as a result of their remodeling of those labyrinthine burrows they excavate, they do this every spring and fall.

Sitting at Turtle Hole I watched and photographed this sparrow for more then 15 minutes as he worked the steam-side flood-twisted willows from the Hole toward the cattails just down river, hopping and flying from branch to branch, wading in the water, flicking his tail up just like a wren, or staring like a heron at the water as that Night Heron I saw right about here in 2015 (q.v.). Last fall and again this year I got just a glimpse of a small bird doing just that in the the cattails, I thought at that time it was a wren, a marsh wren from its roundish body and upright tail. I kept looking for it again and now I think I have found it and it is not a wren but a sparrow.

It took me a while but with the photos, bird books and the internet I am convinced that my bird is a Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia) widely dispersed all over North America with 52 described subspecies. When I was at Ghost Ranch acting a real Birder with Steve Cox I saw a little LBJ ID'd as a Song Sparrow by Steve hopping around a willow covered sand bar on the Rio Chama below the el Vado dam just like my little guy, so I am convinced.

Wed, 28 Mar


    A pleasant walk with several photos for the mosaic project when on my way home I took a few photos of this back-lit LBJ (little brown job) in the young cottonwoods near the H.S. A few days later I looked at the photos and discovered that what I had was not a sparrow, the must common LBJ around here, but probably a warbler so out came the books and internet, some head scratching til I had a possible ID of female or juvenile Pine Wood Warbler (Dendroica pinus) an eastern bird sometimes found in the southwest. But more likely it is a Yellow Rumped Wood Warbler (Dendroica coronata) which I have seen here in the winter (q.v.) , a cousin.

Mon, 2 Apr low 70s, gusty breezy, sunny, a beautiful spring day

    Here is that same shrub that just beginning to leaf out on the 10th of March now alone completely in leaf, but I still dont know what it is. I'll wait until there are flowers.

And there goes another Mourning Cloak just about where I saw the first one on Mar 10 and again posing for a photo, maybe the same one, off he goes toward the elm thicket, I'll follow...
...fighting my way though the brush I find her on a Siberian Elm oozing sap from its wounds (note in the photo the little guy under her head, I did not until I saw the photos), She is now supping that succulent sap midst a whole troop of until now the unnoticed beetles. Maybe they are European Elm Bark Beetles. If they are, bark beetles, the wounds could be from woodpeckers getting at the over wintering grubs and subsequent adult beetles, though nothing I have read mentions a quick meal of sap before flying off to another Elm tree, eat the tender bark from twig crotches, mate, bore under the bark, and lay their eggs in a tunnel between wood and cambium from which resultant grubs eat their way though the cambium, pupate in the tunnel formed and in April chew their way through the bark to the outside world and maybe a quick meal of sap before starting the whole thing over again. If they are European Elm Bark Beetles they are Scolytus multistriatus

our variable spring skies

That's all for now,

this 1st of April, 2018