Citizens’ Science At Abiquiú Lake

Interview with Katherine Eagleson, founder of Abiquiú Lake Amigos.

By Jessica Rath

Annual Bald Eagle Count. Image credit: Army Corps of Engineers.

When you think of a beautiful lake, what comes to mind first? I bet it’s swimming, maybe kayaking, or sailboarding, or some other recreational water activities. That’s the image most of us would conjure up. However, a lake has a lot more to offer to those who are interested: the birds and the insects one can see, the water quality, or checking boats for invasive species. Abiquiú Lake Amigos, a group with about twelve dedicated members, concerns itself with these more scientific projects.

​Katherine Eagleson formally started the group in 2023. She was kind enough to meet with me and explain what they do, and also, how she got into this: she’s a biologist who grew up in Iowa but has lived in northern New Mexico for 35 years. From around 2011 onward she did volunteer work for the Army Corps of Engineers, and when she retired, she started the Amigos group to continue with the survey of the water quality. They added bird surveys on the lake and down the Chama River for three miles below the dam,  and also began to do pollinator studies: bees and butterflies.

Bee pollinators: monitoring the pollinator and the plant. Image credit: Katherine Eagleson.

“Butterflies are the easiest to identify,” Katherine continued. “Generally, bees are hard to identify, but they're very important pollinators. Pollinators in the United States have decreased by 45% and when such a large part of a population is declining, it affects the birds that are insectivores. It’s definitely going to have some impact on warblers and fly catchers, and we are monitoring both of those.”

​The decline in abundance and diversity of insect pollinators due to habitat loss, pesticide use, climate change, and other factors has been observed worldwide. Bird populations in the U.S. are declining too at an alarming rate, and bird watching/surveying is a critical part of recovery efforts, according to this Audubon article.

White pelican: a species that migrates through, an important stop on their way to breeding areas. Image credit: Image credit: Katherine Eagleson.

“There’a a book about where to find birds in New Mexico,” Katherine told me. “The last version I had basically said, don't bother with Abiquiú Lake. There's nothing happening there. This was some years ago, but it’s wrong, because the lake is part of an important migratory route. The birds that we see in April on the lake are migrant birds. We even had a loon last year. It's an important stopover, and that's becoming more and more important in people's consciousness. It's not so much about what birds are here right now, but where they're going. Are we part of that journey? And if we're part of that journey, then we have to make sure that these animals, the birds, the insects, mammals, the reptiles, that they have a place of refuge and can fuel up for the next stage. Every step of the way is important, not just where they breed and not just where they winter. But every step along one way
is a continuation of their journey.”

“We have three kestrel boxes. Kestrels have declined 45%, nearly half of kestrels have been lost in the United States, and it's probably their nest sites. They're cavity nesters. So we've put up some nest boxes, and we're monitoring those. We put up boxes for Juniper tit mice, because they're also cavity nesters. That work is important. You know the old adage, ‘Think globally and work locally.’ ‘What can I do in my backyard?’ Because we're one of the steps in the birds’ journey.”

I love this idea. For the Amigos the Abiquiú Lake isn’t an independent, isolated location but one step in the journey back and forth. It’s part of a larger, dynamic  picture.
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Katherine illustrated this wider view with an example: “We don't have very many nesting bald eagles in New Mexico, but we have a lot of bald eagles that migrate into Mexico in the winter time. So we keep track of that. How many are coming in, how many are staying, does the lake level have anything to do with how many eagles we have? Does the icing level have anything to do with the number of eagles we have? And now we have quite a bit of data, because we've been doing this for quite a number of years.”

Willie, Ann, and Pam putting up nest boxes. Image credit: Army Corps of Engineers.

When did you start, I wanted to know.
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“I think I started in 2011 with the Army Corps of Engineers,” Katherine replied. “I started with a few of my friends here, and they have friends; they're all outdoor people, and they've become interested. And some of them, a couple, Ann and Willie, are really good birders, and Susan's really getting up to speed on water quality. We have some new members who are interested in various aspects of it. So, we're not out trying to get a hundred people in the group. We're trying to get a cadre of people who are really interested in participating on a regular and sustained basis because that's how you can collect data. We started with about six, and at the last meeting we had maybe twelve, so it is growing.”

Willie helping with boat inspection for invasive aquatic species. Image credit: Army Corps of Engineers.

“We have ten stops along the Chama River where we do a bird count every month,” Katherine added. “Now we will do them almost every week for the next three months, because it’s breeding season. We have all kinds of warblers and fly catchers coming in. We have migrants going across. I saw an osprey yesterday moving through. So we have set times, but we also say, if you're out there and you happen to see something, or if you can’t do all ten but you do the first four stops, send me your data. Because, you know, I'm not interested in keeping the data from a certain date, but we want to know what's moving through here, what's nesting here? What bird has successful nests? That's the data we want. Anybody can go out and send me their data once they learn what we're doing.”

How often do you have meetings, I wanted to know.
“On average, we have about six meetings a year,” Katherine answered. “We have more right now, because we will be working with the Army Corps of Engineers on Earth Day for the Earth Day activities. A couple of times a year they have activities at the lake that we help with. We built the titmouse boxes last fall on the Public Lands Day, and we put them up this spring. A number of activities are planned for this year’s Earth Day celebration.”

​“We're also going to help with checking boats for invasive species, the quagga mussels and zebra mussels. They're very short staffed at the lake. The Army Corps of Engineers is making a great effort up there. They care about the environment, they care about their impact, and they want to engage the public.”

Great horned owl and owlets: monitoring resident breeding. Image credit: Image credit: Katherine Eagleson.

Next, I asked Katherine about the poisonous blue green algae. I remember reading the warnings, especially for young children and dogs, because the water can become highly toxic. Katherine corrected me by stating that we’re talking about cyanobacteria, not algae, and that almost every lake gets them at a certain temperature. But  when they reach a certain level they can become toxic. Cyanobacteria are not toxic at every level, Katherine explained. When they start to die, they deplete the oxygen level in the water, and that’s when they can become fatal for birds and mammals. Warming temperatures cause those blooms to happen.

​“Pretty much every pond water in the southern United States is going to have cyanobacteria. But how much circulation is there? How much fresh water is coming into the lake, what is the temperature of the lake, all those things can have an impact.”

Putting up Kestrel nest boxes. Image credit: Army Corps of Engineers.

“The Army Corps of Engineers has a pretty robust water quality testing process now, it collects samples, checks for oxygen, checks for turbidity, checks for conductivity. And they collect samples to check for invasive species, mainly the quagga mussels and zebra mussels. Because they're microscopic when they come in, you have to collect the samples and send them in. You can't see them at that early stage. When we check the boats we're not looking for mussels. What we're looking for is, is there standing water, and has this boat come from a place where those mussels are prevalent. New Mexico doesn’t have them, but they’re in every state around us, Texas has them, Colorado has them, Utah has them.”

What do they do, I asked.

​“They completely clog up everything,” was Katherine’s answer.  “They’re highly invasive on other species and you can't get rid of them. You really can't get rid of them.”

“Right now we're meeting every month because we're setting up a whole summer schedule,” Katherine added. “Everybody's doing everything at this point.”
Earlier, she had mentioned  an osprey platform. I was curious: what’s that?

Susan helping with the pollinator garden. Image credit: Army Corps of Engineers.

“Many years ago, I was there when the Army Corps of Engineers put up an osprey platform, like they had up at Heron Lake,” Katherine told me. “It's a very tall pole with a platform on the top where ospreys can build their nests. But no osprey has ever used it, I think it's too barren. Maybe they don't know what it's for. But I have often seen a bald eagle perched up there, and some other birds. As I said, there was a bald eagle yesterday when I needed to check the Kestrel box. There was a bald eagle sitting right on top of the osprey nest box. The ospreys come up here for the summer from further south, from the Gulf of Mexico and from below Mexico. They come up here in the summer to breed along the lakes where they can fish, because they are obligate fish eaters. So they breed, have their little chicks, and then they fly again. They can't fish here in the winter because it's frozen,”

The eagles stay here for the winter, but where are they in the summer, I asked.

“Well, these days bald eagles are almost everywhere,” Katherine told me. “They were an endangered species till 2007 because of DDT and some other impacts. They were seriously endangered, along with peregrine falcons and a number of other birds. But they've recovered marvelously, and now they're all over the place. But they will be here mostly in the winter, and in the summer they will be further north from here, up in Canada and Alaska. But Colorado has nesting pairs, and we have a few nesting pairs here, but not too many.”
 
“At different times in the year we have different numbers of birds. In the winter we have a lot of waterfowl. We'll go down to the river in January and get 26 different species of birds, and maybe eight or nine or more species of waterfowl. In the summer and in the spring we're trading waterfowl for warblers and fly catchers, and the birds that are coming in to nest. Things will really be popping in the next two months.”
So over the years that you've been doing this, did you see any kind of fluctuation in the numbers, I asked.

“The lake habitat is difficult because the lake level varies so dramatically. A couple of years ago when it was unprecedentedly high, birding was just so much fun because there was so much habitat. But it fluctuates very much. For instance: the grebes build these mats along the shores to nest. When the lake level frequently goes up and down, those mats can't survive, and so we have many fewer grebes.  The river fluctuates a great deal too, but the habitat has improved so much in the last 30 years. From being a straight sort of ditch that didn't have willows and didn't have salt brush and other growth it has changed dramatically. A few years ago they put in some structures to help slow the water down in certain places, so it didn't just rush through. It slowed the water down, so more water moved to the side, and you have little wetlands. There are more amphibians down there,  and frogs start croaking. I heard them just the other day. And there are a lot more willows now, just a great variety of vegetation. So we're going to get more insects, and we'll get more birds, and it's just just greatly improved. We have river otters there now. They've migrated up and they're actually nesting there.”

So we talked about the birds and the water quality, but what about the pollinators, how do you count them, I asked. DO you count them? How many butterflies? How many bees?

Katherine explained: “We probably won't get to the species of bees, that's pretty hard, but we can get the family possibly.The important thing is not only what bee do you see, what butterfly do you see, but what plant are they on? Some adult butterflies may be nectar feeders and and visit a lot of different plants, but most butterflies are very specific about where they will lay their eggs, and that will be important. Do we have the plants so that they can multiply?”

“The monarchs, famously, lay their eggs on milkweed because that’s what the caterpillars will feed on. Many other butterflies are just as specific. Just mallow plants or aster family plants or mint, because the caterpillars are very specific.”
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The Army Corps of Engineers has started a pollinator garden in the campground, and the  Abiquiú Lake Amigos are helping with that. Katherine clarified: “We do some cross referencing, what butterflies are we likely to see in a grassland kind of area, because that's what it is up there? What native plants can we plant there to attract them? One of the  activities this Sunday will be to work on a pollinator garden.”

Yellow-breasted chat: migratory species that come here to breed. Image credit: Image credit: Katherine Eagleson.

“We want to get really good with these two groups, the Lepidoptera (butterflies, moths) and Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, etc.). Then we can spread out into Coleoptera (beetles), and there's a lot of interest in lightning bugs – fireflies. It's only a couple of weeks that you'll see them up at the lake, and there's one place in particular at the river where I find them and we want to monitor them as well, because they’re also in decline.”

​I remember the time when I lived near the river. There were two weeks in June when the fireflies would provide an absolutely magical spectacle at night: like tiny, sparkling stars, they would blink around the bushes close to the water.  I’m so grateful that there are people who are concerned about these fascinating insects and try to preserve them. Actually, everything Katherine and her Abiquiú Lake Amigos do is immensely important and may help to stop the further decline of all these creatures which not only deserve to live in peace but also play a significant role in humanity’s food security. Thank you, Katherine, for sharing this meaningful endeavor with the Abiquiú News.