Recently, while scooping up ‘toadpoles’ from the edge of the pond where marsh grasses, cattails, and bushes thrive, I had a conversation with my neighbor about some of the problems associated with people who left bright lights on all night around the lake. This woman missed the firefly display and was aware that light pollution was partially responsible for the loss of these beetles.
 
  When I first moved to the mountains almost 40 years ago I camped in the field next to the brook and couldn’t fall sleep at night because it seemed as if the field itself was on fire with thousands of magical lights that blinked as they skimmed the tall grasses, glowing like gold or emerald jewels. For a naturalist like me, the season of summer began with the days of longest light, thunderstorms, and the advent of fireflies lighting up the night. The loss of so many ‘lightening bugs’ impoverishes us all.
 
Fireflies have been around since the dinosaur era; these extraordinary insects are at least a hundred million years old with one group spreading through this continent and the other colonized Europe and Asia. There used to be about 2000 species of these insects; now many are facing extinction.

Susan Simard received her PhD in Forest Science and is a research scientist who works primarily in the field. Part of her dissertation was published in the prestigious journal Nature. Currently she is a professor in the department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia where she is the director of The Mother Tree Project. She is designing forest renewal practices, investigating the ecological resilience of forests, and studying the importance of mycorrhizal networks during this time of climate change.
 
Susan’s research over the past 30 plus years has changed how many scientists perceive the relationship between trees, plants, and the soil. Her intuitive ideas about the importance of underground mycorrhizal networks inspired a whole new line of research that has overturned longstanding misconceptions about forest ecosystems as a whole. Mycorrhizae are symbiotic relationships that form between fungi and plants. The fungi colonize the root systems of plants providing water and nutrients while the plant provides the fungus with carbohydrates. The formation of these networks is context dependent.

It's not too early to put your feeders out.  

Reprinted with permission from New Mexico Wildlife
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Among the benefits of living in the United States, and in particular the Southwest, is the visibility of some of the most beloved and photographed birds on the planet . . . hummingbirds.

Native to the Americas, the largest number of species of these diminutive birds occurs in the tropical areas of South America, but a number of them can be found in the Desert Southwest.

There are over 20 species in North America, and New Mexico is among the nation’s hot spots for hummingbird viewing with 17 species documented. Half of those are commonly seen, while the others are considered rare. The four most common are the black-chinned, broad-tailed, calliope and rufous.

Reviewed by Sam Smallidge
College of agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, New Mexico State University

Author: Extension Wildlife specialist, Department of Extension Animal Sciences and Natural Resources, New Mexico State University. 
Wild animals can be difficult to detect because of their instinctive behavior to avoid humans. However, the presence of wild animals often can be determined by their tracks in snow, sand, or soft mud. Many people have learned to read wildlife tracks with remarkable skill for hunting purposes. The art of tracking also allows wildlife biologists to identify habitats in which animals live and to conduct population surveys.

Animal tracks can be found in a variety of places. Some tracks may be as close as your own backyard, while others may require an extensive search. You can find animal tracks in desert sand dunes, along creek and marsh bottoms, in pastures, and along game trails. Once you have discovered the art of identifying wildlife tracks, you will probably never again pass a stream bank without instinctively looking to see what has passed by that area. You will find that a complex animal world, which you never suspected exists, has opened up for you.

Katie Weeks​
Audubon New Mexico

​This past year has given us new relationships with the spaces we live in, and a greater appreciation for the nearby nature of backyards and urban streets. Like so many of us, I have spent more time at home than ever before, finding new ways to entertain and occupy my brain while honoring the state’s Stay At Home orders. Rather than stopping off at water treatment plants after work, or travelling to new trails on the weekends, my birding habit has shifted considerably to the small half-mile radius around my home.

In October, New Mexico made birding headlines (that’s a thing, I promise) with the arrival of a hyper-rare European Golden Plover. The small wading bird made national news as a state first, and only record west of Delaware. Scores of birders trekked out to rural Northern New Mexico and the Maxwell National Wildlife Refuge to stalk the muddy ponds in hopes of glimpsing this very lost bird.

Under normal circumstances, I would have considered this a day trip and made the three hour drive for a once in a lifetime opportunity. But the unease of straying so far from home, as well as the intimidation at the logistics of toting a six week old newborn got the better of me. Instead, I packed my binoculars in the stroller and took (yet another) walk around the neighborhood. The continuing challenges of the pandemic mean big trips to view migration might not be in the cards right now, but it also gives us the opportunity to slow down and “get to know our neighbors” by developing deep knowledge of the more common birds seen on a daily basis.

An inquiring raven settles into a thermal overhead, circling, circling, circling closer to see what has settled into one of the metal folding chairs on Elk Ridge. From the western rim of the box canyon, an eastern sun continues to rise on this 25-degree winter day as it allows the raven to cast its shadow on the sandy precipice of the canyon’s northern rim. The raven glides effortlessly as its shadow dances, appearing and disappearing across the scratches of erosion on the barranca. These are the drainages, the paths of fallen rain, the funnels to the arroyo below. These are the evidence of the times before the rain evaporated prior to reaching the earth.

Traces of snow remain on north slopes or on the north side of rocks and trees. It slowly gives up its moisture not to the thirsty ground but to the kiln dry air. The evidence is the crystalline surface of the snow. It is evaporating.

The raven, apparently satisfied, departs to the west perhaps on his way to work at the butcher’s field of carcasses and bones in El Rito. Breakfast this morning, and then possibly lunch at Bode’s dumpster farther west and north in Abiquiu. There’s plenty to see and plenty of thermals to ride along the way.