Photo Essay

Milnesand, New Mexico

Apple Wood has lived five years in Milnesand, New Mexico, working for Grasslans Charitable Foundation. From May until November, she and her coworker of the last two summers, Afsheen Siddiqi, run a trapline of 280 live traps designed to catch every reptile, amphibian, and mammal that lives on the James Weaver Ranch and an adjoining property, the North Bluitt Lesser Prairie Chicken Management Area of the New Mexico Department of Game and Fish. Five days a week they arise at dawn and empty all the traps, weighing, measuring, photographing, recording, and marking all the animals caught. It takes four to five hours, depending on how many animals they catch. They have to return to open the traps at sundown.

Chris Cherry is a Sibley Nature Center volunteer (who has just returned from a year’s duty in Afghanistan teaching police ethics to Afghan police.) Chris came along to photograph the trip.

Related essay: Roaming with researchers rounding up ringnecks, rats, and rabbitbrush

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The land is almost flat, with gently rolling sandy soil that sometimes collects into small vegetation covered dunes. The traps are spread out across the landscape.

Wood and Siddiqi have to walk miles every day, and stoop over many times.

Some of the traps are small live traps, designed to catch rodents, but they sometimes capture box turtles.

In other places are drift traps, strips of netting that have buckets placed under boards uplifted off of the ground, along with aboveground funnel traps.

These traplines are designed to catch reptiles and amphibians, but also catch a number of invertebrates.

Part of the job is to weigh every animal.

Everything has to be measured, too.

The rodents squirm at first, then settle down, to some degree.

The length of snakes are meausured with a string, which is then placed along a ruler.

Notice the hind foot with the toe missing and a small blood clot already formed. Every animal is marked in some way, so each individual can be identified if it is caught again. This helps determine whether the animals are gaining or losing weight or growing.

Wood and Siddiqi have hundreds, if not thousands, of photographs of what they catch.

As the measurements are taken, the data is recorded...

...on data sheets. As this is the ninth year of the research, there are reams of information stored in the “Chicken House,” the research station at Milnesand.

This is a list of all that has been caught in the traplines.

The bright light of the daytime kept this kangaroo rat squinting.

Notice the very long whiskers of the kangaroo rat.

Kangaroo rats close the entry of their hole during the long days to conserve moisture and to thwart predators. Their tracks mark the active holes.

A northern grasshopper mouse glared at his captor,

Ms. Apple Wood, who quickly processed the data, so he could be returned to the area where the miniature predator was trapped. They eat smaller mice, lizards, insects, and some seeds.

A very young southern prairie lizard was caught along one of the drift net lines.

Pocket mice may be the most plentiful rodent in the sandy country. At least two species live in the area.

Notice the long “snout” of the pocket mouse. It stuffs seeds into pockets (pouches) in its face, to carry back to store in its hole.

Ringneck snakes are beautiful. When disturbed, they often turn the bright red tail up.

This ringneck snake did not have a ring around its neck.

While the ringneck snake was being handled, it salivated. Three tiny drops can be seen along the edge of its mouth.

The Sibley staff was unfamiliar with this species of ant. Harvester ants were also present.

Notice how this ground bee appears to have lots of pollen stuck to the hairs on its belly.

The bee and this pygmy blue butterfly were both found on one of the species of Dalea common in the dunes.

The intricate blossoms of the dalea are amazing.

The dalea crawls over the ground, forming mats over three feet across. The species seems to be most common in the “blowouts” areas in vegetated dunes where little vegetation grows.

Shinoak may have increased its spread since the days of the first ranchers. Many ranchers now use chemicals to control shinoak in the pastures, for it uses most of the little rainfall and grass in shinoak covered areas is rarely as lush as it is in pastures where the shinoak is controlled.

In the previous photograph, several sand sage shrubs are visible. It blooms in September, with a small non-descript ball with a few yellow stamens.

Southern prairie lizards climb up on the shinoak stems and “freeze,” so predators can not find them.

Shinoak acorns are surprisingly large.

Rodent holes are plentiful in the shinoak.

Yucca is also a common component of a shinoak covered pasture.

A small blowout can be seen in the small dune in the distance.

Less than a half mile away from the previous photos is a pasture that has been chemically treated. Notice there is no shinoak visible.

There is a greater diversity of grass and herbaceous plant species in the treated area.

A beetle carried the exoskeleton of a grasshopper for some unknown reason. Does the species eat the exoskeleton for some nutrient it can not get in another way?

Red shanked grasshoppers were the most plentiful species of grasshopper seen on this trip, along with one of the “melanolopus” species.

When viewed dead on, a grasshopper presents a small profile.

A lesser earless lizard froze under a shinoak clump, relying on its camouflaging coloration to become invisible.

Annual buckwheat is one of the most common forbs in both treated and untreated pastures. Notice the small beetle on the left side.

Grassburs are also extremely plentiful everywhere in the sanddune area.

Hairy grama was the most common species of grass in the shinoak covered pastures.

The hairy grama was sometimes associated with milkwort, but the milkwort was uncommon.

The milkwort bloom spikes are tiny jewels.

The tall four-o-clock was more common in the shinoak covered pastures, too.

James’ rush pea was more common in the treated pastures.

The katydids froze when the photographer approached, but when it “freezes” on dried grass and twigs, it is easier to see than when it is on green vegetation.

Yellow flax seemed to be more common in the shinoak covered pastures.

Long flowered gilia also seemed to be more common in the shinoak covered pastures, as well.

Palafoxia was common everywhere. Notice all the tiny beetles on this one.

Sand rabbitbrush was more common in the shinoak covered pastures, for the chemical kills it, too.

Queen butterflies love sand rabbitbrush, and every shrub with blooms had two to six butterflies on it.

The spectacle pod had almost no blooms, but the seeds had a translucent glow.

Snake cotton was just coming into bloom

A threadwaisted wasp scurried on the ground, searching for a tiny caterpillar to feed its young in its underground nest.

A very hairy scarab beetle flew clumsily near Chris and lit on a twig.

In a minute, it moved to a ragweed plant,

And then hid under the leaf of the ragweed, becoming part of its shade.

Pocket gopher mounds brought a redder soil to the surface of the sanddunes.

As always, tracks are part of the fun of visiting sand dune country. Did a centipede scurry among the few raindrops that fell near daybreak? (Notice the small circles left by the raindrops.)

Velvet ants lay their eggs on grasshopper eggs.

This species of velvet ant did not slow down and allow a focused photo.

Horned lizards scurried across the roads as the group toured the area.

A tiny baby horned lizard was also found.

Very fine webbing covered a handful of plants. Was it a species of spider mite that created the webbing?

A syrphid fly nectared on a paper daisy.

Young paper daisy plants have very hairy leaves.

The yellow blossoms of paper daisy turn white when they are old.

Widow’s tears kept blooming until noon, thanks to the clouds that hid the sun most of the morning. Normally they wilt by mid morning.

Annual buckwheat formed a pool of white near a mesquite in a pasture with little shinoak.

In the foreground is little bluestem with old reddish stems. Beyond is big bluestem, with its bloomstalks that reach 6 feet tall.

The blue grass in this photograph is big bluestem. In the treated pastures, there were many big clumps of big bluestem.

The “turkey track” seedheads of big bluestem showed up well against a field of sunflowers.

Some of the research sites had big patches of sunflowers.

Notice the tiny bug on the sunflower ray flower in the lower right. What causes the white strings in the center, and why was one rayflower folded over?

The structure of a sunflower blossom is amazing!

A yellow spiny aster attracted a butterfly.

Funnel spiders often take over a rodent hole that is no longer used.

Fall witchgrass, with its tiny seeds on long panicle grasses is one of the most intricately shaped grass blooms. The seedstalk will detach and float like a parachute in a strong wind.

The group stopped at a windmill with a small pond filled with bulrush, sedge, and cattail.

Only a little bit of open water was visible.

A leopard frog hid among the sedge.

Dozens of damselflies hovered over the water and the frogs.

The damselflies would stop and rest just for a minute.

Several species of dragonflies flew higher over the pond.

Paper wasps swarmed over the water, too, coming to get water to cool their nests, as well as getting a drink.

The bulrush was in full bloom

So was the sedge.

A toad hid among the sedges, but

Was caught and brought to the shore. Ms. Wood identified it as a Woodhouse’s toad.

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