It's all here

Out to the River early on a Sunday morning, Labor Day weekend, the world of humans is sleeping in. By the river I am greeted by a tent with snoozing occupant. I pass on by. The cool green water beckons, the deeper narrow channel just off the intermittent stream sand delta. I step in and open to the real world. Across the river, large sand flats are barely submerged.. water depth 2 inches or less and a thin coat of flocculent algae is blooming under the warm, nutrient-rich water. Corixid water boatmen are as thick as fleas scooting underwater and feeding on the rich algae. Minnows too, probably enjoying the algae and the corixids. A few killdeer with their white vests and black necklines watch me and then fly, zooming low over water and sand, crying as they go.
There is everywhere up the river life and and things happening. On the northeastern sandy jeep road I come across the largest red-eared slider turtle I've seen this year. Their track has flattened the sand with the dragging of the plastron. Looked like it was temporarily blocked on its return to the river by a steep sandy bank. I pick it up and give a small toss up on top of the levee under some cottonwoods.
I watch a Bembex sand wasp busy excavating like a dog digging sand, flying out behind it in sand that was too loose. After 3-4 attempts with no success and just moving sand around the little wasp flew off in search of a firmer sand bank. Out in the water a beaver cut stick floats past my ankle and I turn in time to see a small black snout just barely out of the water on the other side. It looks like a largish snake that does not see me. It begins to cross the main current towards me and I move towards it until it sees me and heads upstream. But the current is too strong and I come up to the 2 foot long snake swimming energetically under water. I lift it quickly with my stick and toss it a couple feet out of the water and glimpse the yellow brown belly and unmarked olive green brown back before it falls back to the water and swims swiftly away. There is so much here. numerous viceroys on the flowers along the sandy levee road, golden rod, white boneset, one pink Pluchea. I see one damaged viceroy, the front leading apex of its left wing has been pecked away, perhaps by the near miss of a passing bird. Its back left wing also is missing a section. I wonder how it can fly if its aerodynamics are so altered. I've seen quite a few damaged viceroys these few weeks and it makes me wonder if viceroys may be suffering because monarch numbers are down and the mimicry of a poisonous or distasteful model may not be providing viceroys the normal protection. I wonder how general a phenomenon this might be.. the linking of the success and problems of mimics with their model.
It is remarkable that so much is here.. by a busy western/ southern town/city of 119,000. So much wildlife leading wild lives undeterred by 85,000 fans who have come to town to cheer for the first football game of the year. I can't remember having ever seen so many frogs as there have been all along the shallow bank of the river. They hop away in a panic as I walk along the sand and mud silty edge of the river bar close by the bank.

Evening River

A Tuesday evening, tired from a full day, I decided to go to the river for renewal. 8 PM the sun going down on a good day. Stepping across the gate and walking down the old jeep road, the yellow flowers of the tall Grindelia gumweed are noticeably closed, at least petals stand erect, closing off the central disk flowers. The world's tallest giant r,agweed stand (not really, but it is 2-3 m high) is releasing bright golden yellow pollen. Woe to those afflicted with autumn hay fever. Stepping through the green tunnel and out onto the levee, the warm white sand is unusually soft this evening.
At the river's edge the water is cutting more and more into the bank I first come to, where once there was a 10- 15 foot 'beach'. Now the current flow has moved against the sandy cliff of the levee.
  Across the water a great blue heron flies up complaining with a hoarse croak about my late visit to the river. I can imagine the complaint something like, 'What are you doing here now? This is the time for the natives, the ones who have always lived here for the last centuries or more, back to a time of nature. Now is their time. What are you doing here?'
  The bare, dead trees up above the far bank are silhouetted against the silver sky and more interesting and beautiful in silhouette than their full-leafed neighbors. The river continues to drop, exposing more, more expansive sand bars in mid channel. The flow now winds principally in smaller deep channels to the side or still in the center.
  Stepping in to the water the temperature is mildly warm, a result of the long string of low 90F days. But on of the river there are bands of cooler water, cooling with evening. I wade across the water and the sand bars to the far bank and the deeper channel. I walk my sometimes/ frequent morning route there but see no damselflies. I do see the snout of a water snake swimming upstream, I scare away.
There is one place by the old concrete rip rap where the water is still chin deep,. but after it shelves out to a broader shallow spread of water. I turn to return and see the silhouette of a large darner dragonfly above the water with a hunting night hawk in the sky above. Returning up the jeep road a dozen fireflies are doing their thing. I think about Phenology and Global warming.. and how the May/ June flood may a bit like a quick example of global warming. The river is only now beginning to develop soft beds of algae across much of the bottom. Before the scouring and churning water and sand prevented significant growth. Now there will be food for corixids and other algal feeders, and later for predators feeding on the corixids. This is all starting  and happening about two months later than was the case the previous 4 years. Now autumn is not long in coming.. and the succession is in early stages. What will it be like when the first cold days arrive?

Mid Day Flora and Fauna

Nice Saturday morning. I went to the river at 11 to see the midday natural world.
The walk down the jeep road is lined now with yellow Grindelia gumweed flowers. Oddly, I rarely ever see any pollinators on these flowers. I'll have to ask Phil G. or Michael K. why this may be so. The orange Campsis trumpet vine is still bright and colorful laying on the ground. The Pogonomyrmex ants are busily foraging in a more-or-less straight line down one track of the road. Odd to think that their bite venom is ounce for ounce is more deadly than a rattlesnake.

Evening River Walk

The late summer katydid chorus was going strong as I walked down the short jeep road towards the river evening. The green dominance of Johnson grass all along the edge of the jeep road, is now broken by many single stems of Grindelia, with bright yellow gum weed blossoms.
Out on the sandy levee, a half inch of rain yesterday had cleaned the sand of tracks and left a dimpled damp crust. The river was a little up.. but still much lower than a few weeks ago.
I walked into the muddy turbid water and out into the middle of the channel, where a sand bar was only ankle deep.
By the far bank the deeper channel is now narrow, only a little more than a meter wide. In the evening I saw just one Heteraina damselfly, where in the morning there will be 2-3 dozen.

Life a Viceroy day and Odonate predation

Viceroy Day

Out at the river by 8. The Johnson grass was still wet with dew and the air had the first bit of a feel of fall.. although it really is only late summer. Perched on the low cottonwood shrub where I drop my pack there was a beautiful Viceroy, basking. The back left wing had been damaged (likely by a glancing 'peck' of a bird). The right wing was immaculate, orange and black, beautiful. Then there were two other Viceroys flying. Then there were six. May have been a recent emergence of late adults.

With the recent half inch rain we received Friday, the sand levee was smoothed with a new crust. Below the stream outflow, a beaver had emerged from the river, clawed up the foot high sand dune cliff and sashayed thirty feet across the sand to the stand of young willows. The curving track of its tail left me imagining a beaver in the predawn dark, dancing or waddling happily on it way to its meal. It had cut a small sapling at the base and dragged it back to the water. The story was there in tracks it left across the sand.

The river had risen a bit so that sand bars in the middle were mostly covered. I walked slowly across, enjoying the tug of the brown flowing water at my knees and thighs until I was across to near the far bank and briefly in surprisingly chilly water up to my chest. Partly submerged in the river, I walked backwards, facing away from the sun, watching robins, cardinals and sparrows foraging through the shrubs and exposed hanging roots. As usual, there were dozens of Hetaerina rubyspot damselfly males flitting from perches along the bank. I thought for a moment how the male rubyspots were coming to the end of their summer. In a month or two their lives will be complete. There will still be many more wonderful dawns, more days above the brown river watching; but these males are no longer young. They are on the home stretch. For an instant I felt the same. Then a pair of foraging robins flitted into view. In their lives, this is a season of plentiful food. A time to enjoy life to the full in preparation for the coming winter and the following new spring. I am a bit like the robin and a bit like the rubyspots.

At the tip of a cottonwood that had collapsed into the river, there was a sudden flurry as a green female Erythemis dragonfly pondhawk  encountered a male rubyspot.. and to my surprise captured it. The Erythemis flew a meter to a cottonwood twig perch low above the water and began to deliberately chew on the head of the rubyspot. I watched the slow process from inches away.

I stepped away down stream watching the bank carefully for the beaver who lives there; but there were only damselflies flitting between their perches.

Strong change at the river this morning. After weeks of bank to bank coverage, overnight,  a few large sand bars emerged in the center of the channel. It looks as though the river has suddenly dropped several inches. Odd. There is no dam upstream that should be making this difference.

Several torn or beaver-cut branches of willow and cottonwood were beached on the wet sand bars. I planted a half dozen of these upright in the wet sand bars to see if they would sprout roots and begin to grow where they were in the middle of the river. Their longterm survival should be about nil because the river will flood again in the next year or so.

On the south west bank I saw fewer of the Hetaerina ruby-spot damselflies. I did see a few pairs mating in the wheel or heart formation - the female with light green abdomen and lighter colored wings.

A greater diversity of passerine birds this morning foraging up and down the far bank. Still no big wading birds; however there was one shorebird, like a small plover, exploring the shoreline and energetically bobbing like a dipper.

As the river winds down to a lower flow volume, the insect life in its side channels and back pools will likely return. Nepid water scorpions, Belostomatid water bugs, Dytiscid and Gyrinid diving and whirligig beetles, Corixid water boatmen apparently were swept away in the floods and now may re-colonize this stretch. Bembidion beetles should return in large numbers to the wet shore of stagnant pools.

Along the jeep road approach just beyond the gate, there is now a great, rich yellow-orange cucurbit blossom.

No show from my (short notice - 20hr) invitation to 25 folks to join me, leaves me wondering if our culture here may have moved on from appreciation of, and need for contact with nature.. or maybe it is related to other causes, scheduling etc.

Large-ish animal plopping into the water after I passed by the cottonwood projecting into the flow. Turtle? Young beaver? I heard and saw the splash but didn't see the animal.

First day of August. Went for a 9:30 morning exploration down by the river.
Through the short green tunnel of brush, Ampelopsis wild grape, and Cocculus snail seed vines twine new fresh tendrils, growing quickly into or above the little path. Robust Ambrosia giant ragweed, Amaranth pigweed, Ipomoea blue morning glory and Phragmites wild reed compete to fill the gap.
The 30 foot pool in the drainage ditch has shrunk to 4-5 feet and the trapped minnows need to be rescued, or they will expire in the heat of the day.
On the clean warm white sand of the broad levee, patches of Aphanostephus lazy daisies, Chamaecrista partridge pea and Oenothera primrose provide color and interest between the ranks of young Salix willow, Populus cottonwood and Tamarix salt cedar.
From the one foot sand cliff by the water and the two foot sandy dune above, the river is still churning and brown but the channel is becoming more heterogeneous. Shallower water in mid channel reveals new sand bars under barely a half foot of water that will soon be exposed.
  I walk across and find the deeper channel by the far bank. I can drift along the bank, up to my chest, shoulders or chin and surprise the normally wary young kingfisher perched on bare poison ivy, or in the shade and concealment of the old willow. From only six feet away the kingfisher flies away with a rattling call to another perch up river.
  Where a big cottonwood tree has tipped over, into the river, a thick bank of heavy clay interrupts the sand bottom and bank. A patch of Cornus rough-leaved dogwood grows down close to the water there and a population of Hetaerina americana rubyspot damselflies gathers. The red pedicels of the dogwood, bearing the unripe green berries are a perfect background field for the red and green damselflies. They align themselves to take advantage of the colors.
  Above the clay bank there are a few curious tennis-ball sized spheres of clay. I'd like to know more about how they are cut or formed.
  Back across the river the sandy banks and long shallow pools do not have the mats of algae that were common the last few summers. There are also no young corixids there to feed on the algae. In previous summers, the corixids numbered in the hundreds of thousands in a half mile of river. This morning I also see no bronze Bembidion beetles, where in previous summers (and earlier this summer) there were thousands per half mile of river, foraging and feeding everywhere along the wet sand. Today there are just a few Ephydrid shore flies at the water's edge.
  I watch a Mississippi kite dive to near the ground and then swoop back up.. perhaps after one of the big cicadas calling. The kite circles over the river, catching updrafts to regain its altitude. A small sparrow crossing the river diverts a few degrees away from the kite; but not much, as if it knows there is little threat.
  Along the sand cliff a loud splash like the sound of a beaver; but it is only a part of the eroding bank caving in and dropping into the water.
  Heading back up the path, a few small yellow Happlopappus vinegar weed and Coreopsis sunflowers and a family of four mockingbirds see me off, as I head for home.

of Life                                                                                                            18 July 2015

Down to the river this morning at 7:30. Setting out, I scanned the drainage ditch for the big box turtle, I’d seen there two days ago. No show this morning. Along the jeep road of packed sand and clay covered with a dry cracking algal crust, the Johnson grass leans in, young elm too and poison ivy extends its leaves.. the green perimeter seeking to gain the open growing space.

Stepping off the end of the road and onto the jumbled barrier of cottonwood logs, I bent back fresh new leaves and stems of willow and wild grape and poke. Contemplating one stem of rough leaved dogwood I suddenly saw the thin green snake perched at the height of my head, quietly retreating down the stem a foot away.

Emerging from the path through the green hedge I looked hopefully at the 40 foot diameter pool of water in the basin of brown river silt. The surface was roiled with minnows, scores of them, cut off from the flow of the river,  doomed to die if their pool dries before a heavy rain can sweep them back down the braided delta into the river. Movement at the near edge of the pool drew my eye to two good-sized crayfish emerging from the water’s edge. One propped itself up on its front chelipeds as though looking around in the dry air. The other, slightly more cautious, remained barely submerged ..but either would have been easy prey for a bird or quick raccoon.

 I walked out onto the clean white sand of the levee and left my sandals there. A small pencil-width hole led down into the sand with strange tracks across open nothingness of sand two feet to the only blade of grass within 2 m in any direction. Perched on the grass, was the shed exoskeleton of the small cicada that had emerged from the hole.

Further along the sand levee a large Bembex sand wasp swooped around me twice. I watched it as it returned to a burrow in the sand and hovered at the entrance as I counted to 60. Then it settled and dug a little sand like a dog digging sand between its legs at the beach.. all the while, the wasp was tapping with its antennae up and down. After 45 seconds it walked into the burrow and disappeared. I waited a few seconds and then tapped the ground by the burrow with my hiking stick a couple of times. After a short few seconds the wasp emerged and swooped around me again, then returned to its burrow, hovered there for 60 seconds, landed and paused at the entrance for 45 seconds doing its antennal movements, then disappeared into the burrow. I tapped again. The wasp re-emerged, chased off a large robber fly then hovered at the burrow for 60 seconds, landed and paused for 45 seconds etc. I repeated this once more with the same result, except this last time a male velvet ant flew in and landed two feet from the nest. Its hoped-for female mate has no wings but will march into the sand wasp's nest without fear, and parasitize the sand wasps nest. ('Sphexishness' : unthinking hard-wired behaviors that look like deliberate considered behavior.)

  So much to see and watch. After an exploration of the water and walk/ swim/ float across and back, I left as I had arrived, by the small pool. There in the sun and two foot deep water, was a nice, young diamond-backed water snake, little bit longer than my forearm. It was swimming/ writhing up and down in the water in an odd fashion. I think it was trying to catch the minnows that were much more agile in the water. Watching a moment, I saw a second snake, same species, same size glide to the edge of the pond and watch me. When it spooked and moved back into deeper water the first snake quit its gyrations and glided cautiously onto some floating sticks where it could watch me.

  After a while I decided to head out.. enjoying the stands of fresh white and pink doze daisies along the way.