August was a busy month, filled with high elevation camping in Colorado, and a lot of cool mountain hiking back home. Even though the lower elevations took on a hot and parched look, at 9,000 feet and higher the wildflower season was far from over as evidenced along roadways and trails, where fresh, colorful blooms could still be found.
The highlight of the month was a 3-1/2 day visit from my brother Bob and grandniece Livi. At 15 years of age, Livi is already a fine artist, and took to nature journaling like a pro! It was great fun discovering and sketching nature on our daily hikes. She even got a chance to hold one of the adult ornate short-horned lizards we see frequently along various trails, and then found a baby lizard on her own, hiding nearly motionless under a small plant. Her smiles were priceless!
Despite the high temps, it was a month of good days and nights, ending perfectly with the rising of a rare Super Full Blue Moon! If you missed it, there’s plenty of time to prepare for the next …… which occurs in March 2037.
Once again, a big shout-out to “Made by Fay” for the inspiring “Littles” idea! These pages are fun to create, and remind me of monthly highlights as I revisit my previous “Littles” posts. Hope you’re enjoying them too, along with the ending days of the season. Stay tuned for the next installment of “Littles.”
June’s hot, dry weather slipped stealthily into July as we became mired in one of those infamous heat domes for weeks. Our rabbitbrush shrubs, usually late summer bloomers, burst into piles of brilliant yellow flowers a full month before normal, and for the first week of their premature bloom, not a single pollinator was in sight. I was so concerned the over abundance of nectar would dry up, pollen would blow haphazardly away, and seeds wouldn’t form. Then one morning I woke to find hundreds of butterflies, weevils, flies and bees flitting, crawling and buzzing about, nearly covering the shrubs completely in a pollination frenzy! How did they know? Where did they come from? What a relief for me, but it must’ve been an unimaginable relief for all of those pollinators that happened upon our oasis in the desert.
And so it went, all month…. bursts of early blooms rapidly completing their floral life cycles, thanks to urgently feeding pollinators.
This is how I remember July, with everything in bloom at once, the air full of pollen and pollinators. It was quite a sight!
Once again, a big shout-out to “Made by Fay” for the inspiring “Littles” idea! Stay tuned for the next installment of “Littles.”
Welcome back to my nature journaling blog! Today I’m excited to introduce my grandniece, Alivia Rapp. Livi, who is a very creative 15 year old, and the daughter of one of my brother’s daughters, came to visit for 3-1/2 days with “Grandpa Bob” (that’s my brother).
Livi with her new love …. A Greater Short-horned Lizard
During the past year, Livi and I have been chatting online about her art, her storytelling skills and her keen imagination in character development which she has honed through many years of daily practice. Then last year, enrolled in a beginning art class where she quickly demonstrated her artistic skills, her teacher bumped her into the advanced class. It was obvious Livi was in her element! She excelled in all of her art assignments which included still life and nature studies, portraits and perspective drawing, using a wide variety of tools such as pencil, pen, watercolor, acrylic, and colored pencil. Her first love of Anime and fantasy storytelling showed in her work too, and one of her creations was awarded a ribbon at her local spring fair. Congratulations Livi!
Now back to nature journaling. Every morning, Livi and I (equipped with sketchbooks and pens), Bob and Roy (carrying daypacks with water), set out for a bit of hiking and sketching nature discoveries along 3 different trails. Roy and I picked trails at different elevations with different habitat zones and views, knowing we’d have a variety of sketchable subjects. We weren’t disappointed!
My brother, Bob and granddaughter Livi on the Sandia Mountain Crest Trail
Hike #1 took us to the top of Sandia Mountain (10,679’) where we enjoyed many spectacular views of Albuquerque and the Rio Grande Valley a mile below, as we passed through a high elevation conifer forest on our way to the Kiwanis cabin. So many sketching opportunities ….. we each tackled the cabin, and Livi added a few of the 50+ lady beetles she discovered, then created a page with a raven, painted lady butterfly, a red paintbrush flower and aspen leaf. I chose a view, some wildflowers and the charming “Snack bar” marker (haha). Back at home we completed our sketches, adding watercolor pencil, with Livi being careful to note the names of my supplies she tried out.
The Kiwanis Cabin and CCC construction plaque; a few of the lady beetles Livi discovered near the trailhead
Livi and Barb hard at work sketching the Kiwanis Cabin
Livi’s wildlife composition along the Sandia Mountain Creat Trail
Hike #2 and we all hiked the upper loop trail at Golden Open Space which sits at about 6300’. The scenery and views were some of Bob’s favorites, so Livi and I spent about 5 minutes sketching one of the prettiest looking East towards the Ortiz and San Pedro Mountains and South Mountain. Then a great surprise discovery along the trail ….. an Eastern Collared Lizard! That was the first collared lizard Roy and I had ever seen at Golden, and after a few photos he decided to rise up on his tippy-toes and run like the wind! Then our second surprise …. we nearly stumbled over a beautifully ornate Greater short-horned lizard ….the lizard referred to by many as a “horny toad.” Before he could get away, Roy was able to snatch him up, roll him over on his back so he could get a belly rub that put the lizard to sleep. Sort of. Then after being entertained by a few erratically running fire engine red velvet ants, we had our 3rd great surprise, thanks to Livi’s eagle eye! A baby greater short-horned lizard that was trying to escape our view was also snatched up by Roy, and also became very sleepy. So cute. Livi was so glad we didn’t encounter any tarantulas, but declared that she loves the horned lizards! Back at home we finished our landscape sketches, and created pages illustrating the lizards. As an exercise in comparison, Livi dissected then sketched a few prickly pear “tunas” (the fruit) and a dried fruit from one of the chollas. She also cut into a large banana yucca fruit ….. which reminded her of a cucumber. Very interesting and fun!
Livi’s sketch of the San Pedro Mountains, colored with pan pastels
Golden Open Space was full of surprises! Livi’s journal page illustrating just a few!
Livi holding the baby greater short-horned lizard she found.
Hike #3 and we were back up Sandia Mountain and hiked the out-and-back 2.5 mile Tecolote Trail which sits at about 8500’ elevation. We had more beautiful views of the valleys below and the Sandia Mountain ski slope (which we sketched), and identified quite a few wildflowers, trees and shrubs. On the way down the trail we were surprised by a lovely mule deer doe as she quietly and carefully picked her way through the forest. Back at home we completed our sketches which included a wildflower drawing of a buckwheat plant, the seed and a leaf of an alder leaf mahogany shrub, and several sketches of oak leaves which we each tried as a blind contour drawing and a contiguous line drawing. Hey, they looked pretty good too! Back at home we rested, exhausted by our artistic efforts. But after Livi returned to her home near Seattle, she completed all of her pages and shared them with me.
Livi and Bob about to embark on the Tecolote Trail
Livi’s journal page with on location sketching exercises
Roy and I had fun sharing our love of New Mexico with Bob and Livi. And I especially loved getting to know Livi and sharing my love of nature journaling with her! Livi and I will definitely be staying in touch throughout the school year as she begins grade 10 and a new session of the advanced art class. I can’t wait to see shat she learns and creates!
Thanks for wanting to come visit and sketch, Livi …. and thanks to Grandpa Bob for bringing you along. It was awesome!
Here’s my sketches from the 3-1/2 days. I loved every minute!
Until next time ……. Take a friend nature journaling!
After sitting idle for many months, The Felix was begging for a short adventure! So we loaded up and off we headed …… north into high elevation Colorado, to enjoy some cool temps and breathtaking scenery.
A quick 822 mile loop in 4-1/2 days met all of our goals plus we enjoyed afternoon thunderstorms and a few rain showers.
Follow the link below to read about our trip as I narrate my daily journal pages.
Was it just 2 days ago when I posted “this year’s monsoons didn’t materialize.”??????? This is headed our way! The skies are grumbly, full of lightning, big fat rain beginning to drop. Wow! This is what we had seconds before posting. We’re that little blue dot east of the big red!
And if that isn’t enough excitement ….. Big Bug Alert! you should’ve seen this giant root borer that paid us a visit a few days ago!
Ok! I’m posting quickly before the lightning wipes out the Wifi on Sandia Mountain.
Sharing my pages from today’s short hike up Cedro Creek, on the fringes of the Manzano Mountains. The water shortage here and all around us has become dire; soils are cracked and dry and beginning to take flight with the barest puff of wind.
Since we last hiked this area (a few days shy of a month ago), the scattered shallow pools of water have either evaporated completely or made a retreat underground, where there may be just enough water to wet the riparian area. All the tender flowering plants have disappeared; many have been able to set seed in hopes of a wetter year to come. With this premature wrap up to the summer season, the birds, bees and butterflies have moved on; hopefully up in elevation where food may still be found.
Our summer monsoon season just didn’t materialize (yet?). But despite the hot and dry conditions, we did manage to find a few leafy green shrubs. The massive cottonwoods appear to be doing well (must still be sufficient groundwater). In the cooler parts of the canyon, there are berries hanging on the 2 species of juniper trees. Acorns have begun to mature on several oak species, even though there are many that have withered; is all of this earlier than usual?
At the trailhead, tucked in a swale where water (when it comes) can collect, I was surprised to see some very stunted smooth sumac. Already showing off their clusters of juicy red berries, the plants are barely a foot tall. This species can rapidly grow to heights of 16 feet. Maybe flowering and fruiting on such short plants is a type of survival mechanism this sumac exhibits when conditions are not favorable? I will be able to watch this little grove over the coming years and maybe answer that question.
Then further up the canyon, about 20-30 feet above the riparian area, Gambel’s and Wavyleaf oaks are growing their acorns. That’s encouraging news for the squirrels who collect and cache them in overwintering nests.
It’s been a challenging year.
What differences in nature have you been noticing where you live? Do you think our changing climate has played a role in driving the changes? Have you observed not only negative but positive affects? I’d be very interested in knowing!
Do birds get bellyaches? I wonder? This is a puzzling yet happy little story about an American crow (Corvusbrachyrhynchos) who paid us a visit and stayed for hours.
We’ve gotten in the habit of placing a dish of cracked corn just over our courtyard wall within view of a few windows. The corn was intended as a supplemental food source for the mule deer that occasionally wander by our house. The deer really haven’t been showing up much and we almost decided to remove the dish, but …………… Something was obviously eating the corn.
So we readjusted our thinking and began to look for critters smaller than deer, like squirrels. Yep, the rock squirrels were gobbling up huge quantities, stashing as much corn as possible into both cheeks, and merrily running off to their cache with their stash! It was quite funny and always drove Luna crazy when they were around (that was our clue).
Some quick sketches of the crow as he “recovered” from some mysterious affliction.
But in addition to the hungry squirrels, there were regular visits from crows, lots of crows (aka “murders” of crows). As they feasted, there was much noisy squabbling amongst them, and definitely a pecking order would form where the older birds (?) would eat their fill, fly away, and then the younger birds would eat and leave. This had been going on for a few weeks, when yesterday Roy noticed a lone bird sitting on the wall long after all his friends had “eaten and run.”
The hummingbird perched over the crow, just watching with curiosity!
For a few hours he sat very still, hardly moving a feather, and didn’t appear well at all. Maybe he had eaten too much corn and couldn’t fly? Maybe he had come to blows with one of his friends and suffered some kind of injury? Maybe an opportunistic rattlesnake, lying in wait by the corn dish, struck and bit the unwary bird?
After a few hours, he jumped down to the ground about a foot away from the wall, and again remained stock still, except for slight reactions to an occasional jay or towhee flyby. He would open his eyes, cock his head, have a look, then resume his stoic stance. There was even a hummingbird that perched just over his head and watched the crow for a few minutes, curious perhaps about why this big black bird wasn’t with his clan?
Another 45 minutes went by where the crow spent most of this time with his head down and eyes closed; the rest of the time with head slightly raised while repeatedly “blinking” his nictitating eye membranes (the opaque eyelids). All of this behavior gave him an even more distressed, sorrowful look.
And then, with noticeable effort, he moved a foot across the ground, coming to rest for another 30+ minutes. We were discussing options to rescue this crow, when all of a sudden, he came to life and flew away! Poof! Just like that!
I think his friends must’ve given him a time out for hogging too much corn, and when he completed his banishment period, he was permitted to rejoin the murder? There haven’t been any crows around since.
June was the month of bugs (from the big tarantula hawk wasps, to the microscopic gnats), withering flowers, disappearing birds, and snakes! We seemed to encounter an extraordinary number of snakes this month, including gopher (bull) snakes, diamondback rattlesnakes, patch nose snakes, garter snakes, and one very scary prairie rattlesnake. Read on for that story.
Another close-up
Luna and the Prairie Rattler! Our scariest encounter was with a 3-foot prairie rattlesnake right in our front courtyard. One day he had crawled out from the shade of a blue spruce to warm up in the morning sun. It was Luna that had changed his demeanor from placid to pissed off. Prairie rattlers don’t typically alert trespassers; that’s the secret to their hunting success, and Luna didn’t recognize the danger. She began sniffing around and unintentionally violated his personal space. The snake responded by instantly coiling and violently rattling his tail. The noise seemed deafening and was definitely alarming. As I came running to Luna’s rescue, Roy noticed the commotion and quickly arrived with snake stick and bucket in hand. By this time the snake had backed into a corner, furiously rattling, but was relatively easy to capture. Snake temporarily out of the way, we then carefully checked Luna for signs of snake bite (none detected! Lucky Luna).
Another close-up
Another close-up
Now back to the snake in bucket. It had taken less than 30 seconds for Roy to capture and slip him into the 5 gallon bucket. It was then that I was able to take my first photos, from a respectable distance just in case the snake decided to leap clear of the bucket!. If looks could kill, well ………….. About 15-20 photos later, the bucket lid was secured in place, and we took the snake for a little ride about a mile from home where he was carefully released in an uninhabited area, unharmed.
After release
Again, a big shout-out to “Made by Fay” for the inspiring “Littles” idea! Stay tuned for the next installment of “Littles.”
Sabino Canyon Open Space, a scenic area for a hike, is found just south of the town of Tijeras in the Manzano Mountains. with less than 120 acres of gently sloping meadows, surrounded by piñon pine and juniper trees, the area has been inhabited since 5500 B.C.
Needless to say, Sabino Canyon has “history,” some of which is on display by walking a short distance uphill from the parking area.
Between the 1600s and 1800s, the meadows of today were actively farmed for pinto beans and potatoes to support the small village of Sabino, of which little is known. However, the area became map worthy when in the 1920s, the Riedling family of musical fame, owned and operated the Riedmont Silver Fox Farm located within the west half of today’s Sabino Canyon Open Space property. Fur coats and capes were all the rage in the 1920s, and the farm raised between 300-500 silver fox, along with minx and rabbit to help supply the demand. When the fur market crashed in the late 1930s, the fox farm was abandoned. What remains are the fox, minx and rabbit enclosures, a water tower, and several outbuildings, all of which seem to be melting back into the landscape.
Visiting this historic area, it was hard to think about such beautiful animals living their lives out in small cages, only to be killed for their fur.
As we walked around the rapidly deteriorating farm buildings (it doesn’t appear any effort is being made to restore the structures), I unwittingly plowed through large patches of gnarly dried out cheatgrass hiding thickets of heavily seeded forget-me-nots. Ouch! When looking down at my socks, boots and boot laces, I wasn’t surprised to find hundreds of seeds had seemingly “jumped” and clamped snugly aboard! So for the next 30 minutes, I plucked and pulled enough of those pesky hitchhikers to allow me to hike on out of there!
A memorable hike back into history….. one I won’t soon “Forget!”
Learning the deciduous Trees and Shrubs shading Cedro Creek Nature Trail ….. Grab n Go Nature Journaling
The timing and location of our daily hikes are being influenced by the extreme summer temperatures we’re experiencing throughout central New Mexico, and throughout the desert southwest. Whew! Even at 7300-8300’ elevation, 95-100F has become the norm, with no relief (or moisture) in sight. I don’t even want to think about Albuquerque temperatures; over 100F before noon, and soaring.
Because hiking in the Albuquerque foothills, at any time of the day, is out of the question, we’ve begun revisiting some our favorite mountain trails. But even tho these areas are higher in elevation, and shadier, it’s still plenty hot. That means if we set out between 7-8am, we can still manage a few miles before our water, like all the creeks, runs dry.
A few mornings ago, we decided to hike Cedro Creek Nature Trail, a rocky but easy dirt path under the shade of big cottonwoods. Expecting to find some water in the creek (there was none), I was hoping to find some interesting wildflowers (which had all withered and dried). The further along the trail we hiked, my focus quickly changed from wildflowers to other natural elements.
Geology is always interesting in these mountain drainages, and Cedro Creek is no exception. The overlying shales and limestones have long ago eroded to reveal large granite boulders that showed signs of erosion from long ago flowing water. That’s a nice thought!
And then there were so many varieties of deciduous trees and shrubs; their leafy greens not only provided relief from the heat, but became a visual treat as we explored the riparian areas alongside the dry creek bed.
As my curiosity about the diversity of tree and shrub species began to grow, so did the air temperature. Not wanting to become reduced to a sweaty puddle in the middle of the trail, and sensing a swarm of drooling, biting gnats and flies giving me a hungry eye, I resorted to collecting leaf and branch samples using a Grab n Go technique. By the time we got back to the car, I had 3 large ziplocks stuffed with over a dozen species of tree and shrub leaves and some fruits.
Back at home, in the comfort of my cool studio, I began my detailed study of these leaves (and the few bugs that managed to hitch a ride). Three days and several gallons of iced tea later, I had completed the 5 journal pages in this post.
That iced tea was deliciously cool, but not as cool as learning what’s growing overhead along Cedro Creek!
a curious nature 