July 2024 – a curious nature

ABQ Urban Sketchers Morning at the ABQ Biopark/Botanic Gardens

July 30, 2024

On July 30th, six of us Albuquerque (ABQ) Urban Sketchers gathered for an impromptu morning of exploring and sketching at the ABQ Biopark/Botanic Gardens. It’s always so much fun seeing what’s blooming any time of the year, even during the heat of summer. Despite the morning’s toasty hot temperatures, the plentiful shade and water features provided many “cool” locations for sketching and exploring.

Since the Japanese Gardens section of the park was new to me, I decided to make my way there to sketch, while enjoying summer flowers and many interesting seed pods from what must’ve been an outrageous, overly abundant Spring bloom. After a slow 15 minute stroll, I had arrived at the 4-acre Japanese Gardens, complete with a waterfall, koi pond, pagodas, wooden bridges, many stone statues, and many many ducks.

My first sketch was of a pretty pagoda that served as a shady spot for one of the ABQ Plein Air members to paint the scene behind me.

Then, wandering deeper into the garden, past the waterfall, I found the koi pond with a few interesting features ….. a walking bridge bisecting the pond where parents brought their children to feed the ducks. Adjacent to the walking bridge was a weathered wooden bridge which crossed the inlet to the pond. As I sketched and painted while sitting on a large flat rock a foot back from the pond’s edge, many large dragonflies hovered nearby, several koi rolled in the water, mallards paddled about, and a bullfrog sounded his loud and low stuttering ru-ru-ruuuuummmmmmm. A few park visitors even stopped behind me to watch my sketches develop!

Small weathered, wooden bridge and rolling koi

It was so calming and peaceful sketching in the gardens, and before I knew it the morning had flown by. Quickly I packed up my supplies and scurried back towards the entrance to the Biopark where I met up with my small group for our “throw down” and photos.

Such a great morning!

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Supplies: Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pen fineliner 0.3 (black) was used first to create quick sketches; Derwent watercolor pencils and Pentel waterbrush were used for the color

Travel Alert! Rhinos on the Loose …… in New Mexico!???

July 29, 2024

One of our early morning landscaping projects has been keeping us busy shoveling our way through 14 tons of pea gravel, one wheelbarrow load at a time. As each backbreaking load is hauled into our back yard and dumped on miles of weed barrier fabric, we keep reminding ourselves how nice it will be when Luna no longer returns home with muddy paws.

What began as a daunting pile of millions and millions of tiny little stones, by morning #3 the pile still looked impossibly huge, while the only thing diminishing was our enthusiasm. So it wasn’t a big surprise when, after only 15 minutes of scooping, a very large and shiny black beetle was welcome excuse for a break! After all, she was charging across our travel path, and without rescuing would’ve surely been squished flat under a careless wheelbarrow tire!

And we paused …… for nearly 45 minutes ….. as we ooohed and aaaahed over such a magnificent beetle, wondering what she could be. Well over an inch long, we noticed her blue-black head, thorax (pronotum) and hard wing covers (elytra) as shiny as freshly polished paten leather shoes, were ringed by a dense fringe of rusty orange hairs. When she went belly-up, we could see those hairs all over the ventral (lower) side of her head and thorax.

Not enjoying exposing her undersides to the world, those six flailing, long and powerful, many-segmented claw-tipped legs flipped her body over and she quickly resumed charging across the ground. Roy kept her in sight while I ran for the camera, determined to take lots of photos to get an ID. About a dozen poses later, and with the help of iNaturalist, I learned that our visitor appeared to be a female Western Rhinoceros Beetle (WRB)!

Yes, apparently there are Rhinos in New Mexico! How cool it would be to find a male or two, and watch how they use their horns (which are as tall or taller than their steeply pitched and somewhat concave pronotums) in battle to win a hornless female.

Wonderings! Why was our female WRB in such a hurry? Was she running from a male? Two battling males? Had she mated already and was in search of a Velvet Ash Tree (a NM native species and likely her preferred food source) where she could lay her more than 100 eggs in the soil beneath the tree? How does she find these ash trees, because I’ve never seen one on our 2 acres or along any of our neighborhood hiking trails?

So many unanswered questions! But you can bet I’ll be on the lookout for the next WRB to trek on by. Maybe I’ll drop everything I’m doing (like scooping pea gravel) and follow her or him just to answer a few questions! Do you think Roy will mind being left behind holding the shovel?

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Exploring the Familiar

July 23, 2024

Hiking and rehiking familiar areas always turns up new discoveries. This may be because my eyes skim over the most commonly seen phenomena, allowing me to actively search for anything new or anything out of place. Rarely am I disappointed.

A few days ago, we explored one of our favorite hiking areas. Because birds tend to be more secretive this time of year, the best surprise was to hear a black-throated sparrow sweetly singing from his perch atop a cholla skeleton.

Because it’s monsoon season, many plants that bloomed late spring are making a comeback, and are happily spreading throughout the area. So to keep track of how ranges are expanding, I made note of their locations and transferred this information to a simple trail map. I also noted that the most commonly seen flowers were from the composite family …. the sunflowers.

Oh! Couldn’t resist capturing the silhouette of Wile E. Coyote glued to the back end of a dented vehicle in the parking area. That’s was a perfect discovery for the resident roadrunners!

Do you enjoy exploring familiar areas? What surprises have you discovered?

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Jack

July 16, 2024

While my mind is on the subject of local wildlife residents (see my long-tailed weasel post just a few days ago), I’ve been wondering a bit about the black-tailed jackrabbit (Lepus californicus). Fairly common in our area (and throughout most of New Mexico and the West), it’s always exciting to see one of these swift, long-legged desert “Jacks” bolt and run when spooked. To escape a predator, at the very last moment before discovery, the jackrabbit uses the element of surprise by leaping from his hiding place in the tall grass. The predator, now in hot pursuit, is usually left in the dust as the jackrabbit continues to leap, then leaps/runs until the “Jack” reaches top running speed all the while zig-zagging in an unpredictable manner. And poof! Gone! The predator, now completely baffled, gives up the chase, while the clever jackrabbit lives another day.

So back to my wonderings. Just how fast can a “Jack” actually run? How far can he leap? Doesn’t the jackrabbit get its genus name, Lepus, because they “leap?”

What I learned is the top running speed for a jackrabbit is 35-40 mph (Zoom!) and they can leap 15-20 feet in a single bound (super Jack!). Their top speed + their leaping nature allows them to easily escape most predators. But the name Lepus has nothing to do with leaping. Lepus, as translated from the Latin, means rabbit/hare. And one other thing that was news to me …… a jackrabbit is actually a hare, not a rabbit as the common name would imply! Of course this sparked another wondering. What’s the difference between a hare and a rabbit?

Various sources cleared up the hare vs rabbit conundrum …..

Hares are usually larger than rabbits, have longer ears and black markings on their fur. Hares have 48 chromosomes; rabbits have 44. Hares haven’t been domesticated; rabbits have. Hares live and give birth in shallow depressions in the grass; the young are born fully furred with eyes wide open, able to fend for themselves soon after birth (precocial). Rabbits usually live and give birth in burrows; the young are born blind and hairless and totally dependent on mom (altricial). Hares usually live alone; rabbits live in large communities called warrens.

There’s so much more to learn, but this will have to do to satisfy my curiosity for now. If you have hares living near you, or perhaps you have a pet rabbit, share your experiences and observations of one or both species.

P.S. I had fun drawing this jackrabbit (jackhare???), and did so as a gift for a dear friend who happens to love hares/rabbits. Wonder which one is her favorite? I’ll have to ask!

As always, thanks for stopping by!

Never Underestimate this Pint-Sized Carnivore…. The Long-Tailed Weasel!

July 13, 2024

Such a surprise and total delight to find a long-tailed weasel hunting on our property! Busy probing numerous rodent burrows for an easy meal, he was too occupied to notice us staring in awe. What a beautiful little guy ……. from the white mask markings on his head, to his luxurious sable-colored fur draped over creamy buff-colored underparts; from his ground hugging, long, thin and sleek body, to his equally long or longer tail with a dashing black tip ……. the long-tailed weasel is a sight to behold!

Although their range includes southwest Canada, all of the lower “48,”Mexico, Central America and parts of northwest and southwest South America, seeing a long-tailed weasel is rare. Only one animal occupies a territory roughly 40 acres in size, which boundaries are aggressively maintained by frequent scent marking.

Even though the neighborhood pack rat, mole, squirrel and mice populations might suffer within a long-tailed weasel’s territory, we would enjoy and appreciate seeing more of this ferocious, pint-sized carnivore around our home!

Have you ever seen this or any weasel species? If you’ve seen this weasel (aka ermine) during winter, fully cloaked in brilliant white except for a black-tipped tail, ooooooooo! How lucky! Share your weasel observations please.

As always, Thanks for stopping by!

Surprise! A vine-y, twine-y desert milkweed discovery ……

July 9, 2024

Just when I was feeling confident about the morphology of the milkweed family of plants, a new twist on the familiar leaps out shoutin’ “ Hey, lookie here!” Expecting to see a common vine gracefully twirling its way up a desert shrub, I paused ……. searching for the crimson red trumpet-shaped flowers of Ipomoea cristulata (Trans-Pecos morning glory). But instead there was an umbrella of 5 flowers, each with 5 widely spreading greenish-brownish-mauve colored petals crowned in the center of an unmistakable floral corona, a sure fire characteristic of a milkweed! Could it be?

Oh Yes!

This unexpected, undeniable discovery had me puzzled though. It’s been two years since I created a detailed post about the Asclepias genus of milkweed (see Summer Botany: Meet the Milkweeds). At that time and throughout the decades prior, my knowledge of milkweeds was limited to Asclepias, and the specific characteristics of that genus.

But here was something new-to-me; so worthy of whatever time it might take to learn all about this find in the dogbane family (Apocynaceae), aka the Milkweeds. I quickly confirmed this vine does not belong with the Asclepias species of milkweeds, but is of the genus Funastrum, which is Latin for rope (funis) with twining stems (astrum), commonly referred to as the “twinevines.” And the full name of this plant is Funastrum crispum, commonly called Wavyleaf Twinevine.

Most of what I uncovered about Wavyleaf Twinevine is included on my 2 journal pages, along with some confusing taxonomy involving family and subfamily names, tribe and subtribe names, and how until 2012, this plant was known as Sarcostemma crispum. Curiosity about the taxonomic history will undoubtedly tempt me to sort through the confusion ……. maybe someday soon!

Have you discovered anything new-to-you in nature lately? What was it, and did it lease to more discoveries?

Thanks for stopping by!