Large Puff Balls - Jemez Mountains

When I was a kid, I liked to stamp on puff balls and see the smoke-like spores fly away from under my foot. The puff balls I remember were small. Those shown below are as wide as my size 10 shoe. These are by no means the largest puffballs; some puffballs are as large as a watermelon. 


Puffballs belong to the family Agaricaceae or true puffballs and are part of the Order Agaricales.

The puffballs pictured below were growing at an altitude between 9,000-10,000 feet in the Jemez Mountains exactly where I had spotted the dusky grouse. The area contained at least 5 puffballs.


Billions of spores are contained beneath the puffballs outer skin which begins to split as the spores mature. Once the skin splits open, the spores are blown out and carried away by the wind.


The sequence of three photographs (A-C)  show some of the changes that occur on the skin of the puffball as the spores mature. The photos were taken about a week apart and do not necessarily show the same puffball.

A.  The lip balm in the picture below is 2 5/8 inches long. Based on that length the puffball is about 4.5 - 5 inches across. A baseball is about 3 inches in diameter.

B. Note the warty appearance of the puffball surface but there are no holes in it yet.

C. The puffballs began to open up by the third week. Note, the puffball is full of billions and billions of brown spores.

Based on where the puffballs were located and on their size and appearance they appear to belong to the genus Calvatia or giant puffballs which range in size from a baseball to a basketball. Additionally, puffballs of the genus Calvatia are reported to form a warty surface and to disintegrate when they get old. That appears to have occurred with the puffballs pictured above.


Most puffballs are reported to be edible provided they are harvested when they are young and are all white inside (like all mushrooms, puffballs should only be collected for eating by someone experienced in their proper identification). Those in the pictures of this blog are much too old to eat.

A recipe for parmesan puffballs is available here. Parmesan Puffballs

 

Sooty Grouse? Dusky Grouse?

Today, we headed up into the Jemez Mountains to complete the measurements of the last of more than 100 trees making up a large wild turkey roosting area . On the way up my mind was wandering when I nearly walked into a small group of 5 grouse. They let us walk to within 15-20 feet of them before they began to move away. That was fun.

I thought that identifying this bird would be easy. So, I looked in the National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, 5th edition. According to this guide and based on the presence of a terminally gray banded tail these are Sooty Grouse. But the Sooty Grouse are only found in the western coastal region of the US and Canada. The Dusky Grouse is found to the east of the Sooty Grouse as far south as Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico.

The Nov 2006 issue of the  Grouse News reports that in Colorado and in New Mexico the Dusky Grouse have gray banded tails (instead of solid black tails) usually with 18 feathers exactly like the Sooty Grouse.

The terminal gray band on tail feathers are clearly visible in the photo above.

In a recent research article on the genus Dendragapus there are the two previously identified populations, sooty and dusky grouse, and a new and previously unidentified division between the northern and southern dusky grouse populations. This may help explain the confusion in finding the terminal gray bands on the tail feathers of two geographically separated grouse populations; the west coastal sooty grouse and the southern dusky grouse populations.

Grouse Behavior

After a little background reading I discovered that others had found this grouse particularly unafraid. For example the following quote comes from the April 1936 issue of The Auk.

Dusky Grouse in the Chuskai Mountains of northeastern Arizona and northwestern New Mexico.

"On June 21, 1936, a pair of Dusky Grouse (Dendragapus obscurus obscurus) was seen eight miles southeast of Lukachukai, Apache County, Arizona, approximately four miles from the New Mexico state line, at an elevation of approximately 8,800 feet on a steeply sloping, southeasterly exposed canyon wall. The vegetation was dominantly ponderosa pine and Engelmann spruce with underbrush of oak, aspen, Symphoricarpos, wild rose, cliff rose, ferns, Cercocarpus, and small Douglas fir.

The hen was seen first at a distance of about ten feet. She merely clucked and walked slowly away among some clumps of underbrush and stopped behind a small bush about thirty feet from where she was started. Approximately one hundred feet up the trail the male was encountered. On being disturbed he squawked and flew about thirty feet up to a horizontal limb of an open ponderosa pine where he perched for about fifteen minutes jerking his head this way and that, apprehensive, but not excited. Both individuals were extremely tame and apparently had never been molested by human beings. The Navajo Indians inhabiting this area during the summer do not hunt game birds unless taught to do so by the white man."

Paul Phillips, U.S. Soil Conservation Service, Gallup, New Mexico

Others have reported similar experiences of this unafraid grouse. The following is a particularly sweet description of such an experience in the July-August 1904 issue of The Condor: A Magazine of Western Ornithology by Florence Merriam Bailey.

"One of our pleasantest field experiences last summer was with an old Dendragapus in the Rocky mountains, which, after a short acquaintance flattered us by coming to accept us as neighbors. We had a hint of the pleasure in store for us as we were packing up the mountains, for when my horse, leading the way for the pack horses, flushed an old cock grouse which had been dusting himself at the foot of a tree close to the trail, he lit again on a branch so near that we could see his small pointed head and craned neck as he watched us. “If they’re all as tame as that ‘“--I thought with a thrill of expectancy. When we had climbed to 11,000 feet we made camp in the blue spruces and established ourselves for our Canadian zone work. "

The complete article can be downloaded and read by going to A Dusky Grouse and Her Brood in New Mexico .

According to Wikipedia Florence Merriam Bailey "... became the first woman associate member of the American Ornithologists Union in 1885, its first woman fellow in 1929, and the first woman recipient of its Brewster Medal in 1931, awarded for Birds of New Mexico.

Rivers of Black

The two major fires of 2011 in the Santa Fe region have been extinguished. This past week I saw some of the after effects of the Las Conchas fire, the largest in New Mexico history, in the Jemez mountains.

Most of the damage to the forests was what one would expect from a large and very hot fire. What were previously lovely Ponderosa pine trees are now observed as resembling giant black toothpicks, some with and some without black branches, against the blackened mountain terrain. Other trees including Douglas fir and Southwestern white pine were also destroyed. 

In some areas, where the fire was particularly hot, the forest floor looks as if someone had swept away every bit of pine liter leaving a smooth black surface. As a consequence, the forest floor no longer absorbs water efficiently. New organic material will need to accumulate along with a succession of plants requiring many years of growth, death and decay, before the forest floor can again absorb a normal rainfall.

Note: In the picture above, the ground is smooth where the forest debris was consumed by the fire. A few dead pine needles and broken branches are beginning to accumulate anew.

Although our monsoon season has been short on rain this year, we have had some good rainfall in the past week.  On the way back from measuring Douglas firs in a wild turkey roost area we stopped at the Las Conchas trail head on NM route 4. This site is close to where the Las Conchas fire began.  The Las Conchas trail follows a little stream several miles into the forest.

That little stream, running down from the mountains from the direction of the fire, was like no other I have ever seen. It looked from a distance to be nearly as black as soot or perhaps resembling a river of black bean soup flowing downhill.

Note that the churning water in the stream at the Las Conchas trail head was very dark.

This black river was the result of the runoff from a burned forest no longer able to absorb a normal rainfall.  Instead, the rain carried tons of soot and soil from the once living forest floor down the mountain side to little streams that merged with bigger streams and eventually flowed into the Rio Grande. The cities of Albuquerque and Santa Fe suspended use of the Rio Grande water for drinking as it contained too many particulates to filter.

The scene above was repeated in many streams draining the thousands of burned hectares in the Jemez mountains.


I came upon this quote about rivers.

“Until I came to New Mexico, I never realized how much beauty water adds to a river.” – Mark Twain

Let's hope the little stream at Las Conchas recovers soon and returns that beauty.

The New Mexico Wild Fires of 2011

I had made plans for the summer of 2011, especially those concerning volunteering in the Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP). I and three others were measuring the trees in wild turkey roosts, I was one of many who participated in tagging and tracking newborn Elk in the VCNP and I was about to participate in measuring the height of tall trees that had been detected by LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) in the VCNP.  

The lack of a ‘normal’ amount of rainfall in Northern New Mexico put a halt to my plans. As a result of this drought, the Santa Fe National Forest placed the VCNP and
national Forests under stage III fire conditions for the first time since 2004.

Stage III fire restrictions involve closure of public lands. Evaluation guidelines are reviewed to determine threshold levels that substantiate the need for closures.

The rainfall in Santa Fe alone was short by nearly five inches by the start of June; meaning that we have had less than an eighth of an inch of rain since the year began. For those of us living in Santa Fe the fire season became real with the advent of the huge Wallow fire that started on May 29, 2011 in Arizona. We woke up one morning in Santa Fe to the smell of smoke and ashes all over our automobiles. This fire became the largest in Arizona recorded history. It burned 538,049 acres in total.

Our next fire began in the Santa Fe National Forest and was called the Pacheco Fire. It was only a few miles from Santa Fe and we could see the smoke from our rooftop deck.

The Pacheco fire consumed about 10,250 acres.

The next fire was the Las Conchas fire that began on June 26, 2011 when the wind blew an Aspen onto a power line and caught fire. The line eventually broke and the fire spread rapidly in response to high winds and very dry conditions.

By June the population of Los Alamos was evacuated. We could see the smoke from our deck and we could see the flames from a near-by hill.

As of today the Las Conchas fire is the largest in New Mexico recorded history having burned more than 142,250 acres

The Donaldson fire was started by lightning on June 28, 2011 near Hondo, NM. This fire burned 101,563 acres becoming the second largest fire in NM recorded history.

Now, I am hoping for rain but a little at a time. With the loss of so much forest there is the real chance of rapid runoff from heavy rains resulting in flooding of communities and dangerous flash floods in many areas. 

Rocky Mountain Iris (Iris missouriensis)

Yesterday, I spent the day measuring wild turkey roost trees in the Jemez Mountains in the Valles Caldera National Preserve. While there I could not help but notice the beautiful Rocky Mountain iris blooming just about everywhere.

My First Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

One of our favorite places to camp and/or visit has been Bandelier National Monument. My first trip here was in 1988 and I immediately fell in love with the land and the sky. On that and subsequent trips we saw many kinds of animals including coyotes, rabbits, wapiti, mule deer, black bears, ground, rock and Abert's squirrels, many birds (especially humming birds and ravens),  diamond mining ants and many plants and wild flowers. During many visits I never saw a rattlesnake.

This past week while walking along a paved trail with my wife, daughter and her two cherubs, not far from the visitor center, my daughter spotted what turned out to be a Western Diamondback rattlesnake at the side of the trail. The snake was probably less than 18 inches long and was coiled up in some remaining sunlight.

This little guy began heading into the dry pine needles. We watched him go.

One of the park rangers identified the snake from my pictures. Apparently the black and white bands towards the end of the tail are characteristic the the Western Diamondback rattlesnake.

Wild Turkeys in New Mexico

I recently joined a group of volunteers whose task is to gather information about the ecology of the wild turkey population in the Valle Caldera National Preserve.  The project will last the entire summer and possibly into the autumn.

The wild turkey in this mountainous region of New Mexico is a subspecies called Merriam’s Turkey or Meleagris gallopavo merriami. Merriam’s Turkey likes to roost in older trees on steep mountain slopes below a ridge at an elevation roughly between 8,000-11,000 feet. The Valle Caldera Trust staff record the UTM coordinates of each tree located in each wild turkey roost site.  

First they have to identify the general location of each roosting  area. Next, trees in each area are inspected for evidence of turkeys. This evidence is commonly in the form of turkey droppings beneath the trees used as a roost.

A tree can be assumed to be an active roosting tree if lots of fresh turkey droppings are located on the ground beneath a tree. Or the droppings may be older indicating that a particular tree has been a roosting tree in the past and that turkeys may return to that site in the future. 

Surprisingly, the sex of a turkey can be determined from the shape of the dropping; the droppings from a hen are more compact e.g., coiled, looped, while the droppings from a Tom or gobbler are more extended e.g., straight, J-shaped (a desiccated dropping from a male is shown in the photo below).

 Occasionally, the presence of turkeys may be indicated by the presence of feathers such as from a recent kill by a predator. For example, masses of feathers maybe found on the ground beneath or close by a roost site. Natural predators include an excellent tree climber, the bobcat. 

Our task is to make careful measurements of the roost trees and to describe the habitat of each roost site. Tree measurements include each tree's location using UTM, tree diameter (circumference breast height), height, aspect (the compass direction a tree faces on the down slope measured from the down slope side of the tree, canopy height, crown classification, percent slope of land, general habitat type, trees per acre and type of tree. 

Ancient Meteor Hits Near Santa Fe, New Mexico

In my wanderings on-line, I recently stumbled upon a website created by retired petroleum geologist, Thornton (Tim) McElvain.  http://www.impactstructure.net/

Tim writes, "With this website I will present evidence to support my hypothesis that there was an enormous Mid-Tertiary Impact Event in the Southern Rocky Mountains and Colorado Plateau." The Mid-Tertiary was 25-40 million years ago.

Tim's website makes for some interesting reading. "After I retired from the oil business I decided to map the geology surrounding our home near Pecos,  NM. The geology and the structure in that area completely confused me until serendipitously my wife and I visited Rochechouart, France...."

He continues, "While we were there I found a museum dedicated to the Rochechouart Impact Structure, which also had a map of walks illustrating various elements of the structure. During our stay as I visited the museum and walked the countryside a light went off in my head, I all of a sudden understood what was confusing me at home. Further investigation convinced me that our home lay within the central uplift of a morphological complex impact crater approximately 9 miles in diameter."

"I am proposing several new impact structures along with known impact structures, and evidence of shock metamorphism (see Wikipedia for an explanation) in areas that I cannot associate with a specific impact structure within the Southern Rocky Mountains and Colorado Plateau."

"My hypothesis speculates that all the impact structures, proposed impact structures, and evidence of shock metamorphism is coeval and is the result of the impact of an asteroid or comet composed of loosely packed bolides ranging in size from dust to very large bolides capable of creating an impact crater fifty or more kilometers in diameter."

One of these objects reportedly impacted about 10 kilometers east of the Historic Santa Fe Plaza.  In a peer reviewed article in Earth and Planetary Science Letters in 2008, Fackelman et al report their evidence for the impact near Santa Fe, NM. The impact site borders NM route 475 from approximately the location of Ten Thousand Waves, a wonderful bath and massage business, as far up NM 475 as Hyde Park. The authors, including Tim, reported on the discovery of shatter cones along NM 475 as well as microscopic changes to quartz crystals that are only created by large impacts.  

In the article summary the authors declare: "Paleoproterozoic crystalline rocks exposed over an area > 5 km², located ˜ 8 km northeast of Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA, give robust evidence of a previously unrecognized terrestrial impact structure. Herein, we provisionally name this the “Santa Fe impact structure”.

As a retired scientist, I am always looking for interesting things to do. This looked interesting so I decided to look for the shatter cones reported by Tim McElvain. My problem was I had never seen a shatter cone but I had a copy of the paper and Tim's website. I also knew they were spotted on some road cuts on the way up to New Mexico's Hyde Park on NM 475.  So, I began my search for shatter cones along NM 475 on March 22, 2011.

Above. I got lucky and found one of the shatter cones located by the authors of the research articles. Notice the direction of the cone; up and toward the peak where the stone is broken off.

See blue arrow in picture below.

 The shattered rock comes in two halves but the half that would have covered the surface of the shatter cone shown above is long gone. Probably removed by the crew that cleared the route for the road.  

Earth and Planetary Science Letters Vol 270:290-299; 2008
http://www.astrobio.net/exclusive/3579/the-impact-that-shattered-santa-fe

Paleoproterozoic - 1.6 to 2.5 billion years ago