The
Tuesday Night drawing group of Santa Fe drew both in person and on
Zoom at the new
Argos Gallery/Studio location. They arranged a hybrid real/virtual drawing session because we are still coming out of Covid. I drew south from Albuquerque, someone else drew north from Taos; and someone else drew way north from Wisconsin.
PRINT
New Mexico Spadefoot Tadpoles
On June 28th I saw a lots of tadpoles swimming in a temporary pool behind
Quelab.
I first checked the standing water further down the rail tracks, two blocks west, where I found the tadpoles
two years ago in 2020. This pond was teaming with
Triops, but no tadpoles this year.
Triops swimming over toad eggs?
And WHAT is this?
(shrimp?)
Toad Update
The ephemeral pond dried out on July 2nd, leaving a film of tadpoles over the mud (in spite of adding more water the night before):
The ephemeral pond dried out on July 2nd
leaving a film of dead tadpoles
However the night before (
July 1st) I scooped up some live tadpoles and preserved them in
Quelab, hoping for a rain over the weekend to replenish the ephemeral pond, so I could release them into nature again:
We did not get any new rain, so I released the tadpoles in a pond next to the Rio Grande river on the 4th of July. I hope the ducks don't eat them.
Triops
Meanwhile I filmed the Triops pond before it dried out (July 29th?), and then on July 2nd when the pond mostly dried out and the triops were left in the mud, wiggling to the touch:
I fished out four of the wiggling triops and added them to the tadpole cup, but they did not survive. It's incredible that looks like a horseshoe crab can sprout and flourish for a bit in the desert, with other water life.
There are a lot of
Triops videos on YouTube:
