This is my first in a series of Daily Buckets from the Rio Grande Valley of New Mexico. This has so far been a very dry April in a very dry year. As is typical of the Desert Southwest, there have been some spotty areas of rain. The nearby mountain ranges on the east of the river valley had some heavy rain and snow over the last winter, leading to one of the most spectacular Mexican poppy displays in years during March. Such is the roll of the dice nature of the desert.
Mexican poppies near the Organ Mountains, New Mexico.
Close up of Mexican poppies - note white form.
At home I had planted a garden calculated to attract butterflies, bees, wasps, and hummingbirds, with plenty of sunflowers for the local house finches and lesser gold finches later in the year. I have so far been rewarded with several skippers, numerous cabbage whites and an occasional mourning cloak and painted lady, plus honey and carpenter bees and black-chinned hummingbirds. In addition the yard is visited by curve-billed thrashers, northern mockingbirds, house finches, American kestrels, European starlings, mourning doves, turkey vultures (overhead, although one did land in one of our mulberry trees a few years ago), American robins, white-wing doves, Inca doves, lesser goldfinches (just saw one today!) and occasionally we have seen Wilson's warblers, summer tanagers, great-horned owls (actually heard, but not seen), and Cooper's hawks (one once dismembered a dove outside our east window!). The sound of white-winged doves calling is nearly constant now during the day. The temperature has shot up early this year, reaching the 90s this week and today the humidity stood at 7%! At present we have a dust storm in progress, a common occurance in our area in spring.
Continued....
A male cabbage white on borage in Mesilla Park, New Mexico.
We now have many honey bees at the borage, but the carpenter bees seem to prefer the cherry sage.
A lucky shot of a carpenter bee at cherry sage, Mesilla Park, New Mexico.
Several white-lined sphinx moths showed up a few days ago and have been at the phlox in the late afternoon and early evening.
White-lined sphinx moth in our garden in Mesilla Park, New Mexico.
Our black-chinned hummingbirds are back, but we have seen no rufous hummingbirds so far. We have only had calliope hummingbirds once - about two years ago. I never hang hummingbird feeders, but instead plant hummingbird flowers, like sages.
Male black-chinned hummingbird at cherry sage in Mesilla Park, New Mexico.
The local vulture flocks returned at least four days earlier this year (around March 8th instead of March 12th) and they used to come in around the 15th of March 10 years ago! The American crows left within a week or two of the arrival of the vultures. Now we have at least 60 vultures and 0 crows!
Turkey vultures on their evening perch in Mesilla, New Mexico.
Vultures over Mesilla Park
All photos by me.