Alamos Trip day 6

[Michael Klein]

Here is day 6 of my Alamos Trip.  Work took me out of town again last week
and so I had no time to get to this.  I will have 2 more posts for day 7 and
8 tomorrow .  When I get more of my pictures ID'd I will put them on my
website and let you all know.

Michael Klein
San Diego

Alamos day 6 - It rained Monday night from about 11pm until 2am.  I was woke
up by some pretty good claps of thunder and an excellent lightning show.
Almost as good as my 60's flashbacks.  We won't go there.  Winds really
picked up and, as I said, the rains came around 11pm.  It was a fairly heavy
rainfall and soaked things pretty well.  Temperatures cooled off nicely,
78°F.  I took advantage of it and after going back to bed at midnight slept
soundly without even sweating.  Had some light pastries for breakfast and we
were off to the Sewage Ponds at 6:45am.

The rains from the night before, if anything made things muggier.  The
'Ponds' really are not ponds.  It is part of Arroyo Agua Escondida, which is
the arroyo that runs through the southern end of town.  Their sewage system
currently is set up that the pipes go about 4 km out of town to the east.
There is a smell but it really is not a sewage smell as much as it is algae
is association with standing water.  Of course this area is ready made
habitat for lovers of Odonates.  We saw plenty of the black skimmers we had
at the Rio Cuchujaqui that we could not ID.  I also saw what appeared to be
green darner, and blue-eyed darner.  I had a spike-tail but could not ID it
and a few roseate skimmers.

This was all before 8am.  David drove Claude and I about 2km further than
where the SEABA folks walked to on Sunday.  We wanted to start further east
and slowly walk back towards town.  We could not stay out as long as we had
hoped because Claude wanted to get to a store that was only opened on
Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9am to 12pm to get some maps of the area.  So,
after David dropped us off we were ready to lep the place.  Even at 7:15 am
there was butterfly and skipper activity.  But instead of looking at leps
initially I was soaking in this beautiful and rich riparian area.  Again I
was looking at this tropical dense forest with lots of bird vocalizations.
One of the things I was enjoying was the echoing from the birds.  Plenty of
tropical kingbirds as well as hooded and Bullock's orioles.  We thought we
had streaked-backed orioles but since we were not familiar with their call
we could not zero in on where there might be.  The chances were pretty good
that we had some.  For me though one of my first birds of the day was the
groove-billed ani.  Another new one for me and this guy even did his
familiar spreading of his wings while perched to dry them.  Throughout the
rest of the morning we must have seen a couple of dozen.

About 8am as Claude was getting into watching birds I was getting into
watching leps.  Dorantes long-tail (Urbanus dorantes dorantes) were most
probably the most common lep.  I could not go to a baccharis without seeing
3 with many times having more than that.  Every once in a while in the early
morning we had spurts of ceraunus blue (Hemiargus ceraunus gyas), gulf
fritillary (Agraulis vanillae incarnata), emorsa spurwing (Antigonus
emorsa), common sootywing (Pholisora catillus), and brown long-tail (Urbanus
pronce).  The vegetation was loaded with lubber grasshoppers (Taeniopoda
sp.).  These guys were not smaller than 6cm and many times over 8cm.  They
were just outright big.  You have to understand, in San Diego we have
graybird grasshoppers.  They are big, up to 7cm but they are long.  These
lubbers were bulky as well as long.  Even with the large numbers throughout
the arroyo, you got the feeling that they could not cause significant
damage.  The vegetation was just too dense.

About 8:30 we came to a clearing with lots of flowering baccharis.  This is
where the activity was at.  At this point Claude became most interested in
leps than birds.  There was just so many nectaring and flying about, you
could not help but go into stimulation overload.  There were hundreds upon
hundreds of butterflies and skippers in the clearing.  You wanted to look at
every one of the shrubs but knowing we were limited on time could only
choose a few.  We were still about 1km from the furthest eastern spot that
everyone got to on Sunday.  So Claude took a section and I took one.  Here
is what we had: giant swallowtail (Heraclides cresphontes), cabbage white
(Pieris rapae), southern dogface (Zerene cesonia), lyside sulfur (Kricogonia
lyside), white-angled sulfur (Anteos chlorinde nivifera), cloudless sulfur
(Phoebis sennae marcellina), orange-barred sulfur (Phoebis philea),
Boisduval's yellow (Eurema boisduvaliana), sleepy orange (Eurema nicippe),
gray hairstreak (Strymon melinus franki), gray ministreak (Ministrymon
azia), ceraunus blue (Hemiargus ceraunus gyas), marine blue (Leptotes
marina), Palmer's metalmark (Apodemia palmeri arizona), fatal metalmark
(Calephelis nemesis nemesis), poeas metalmark (Emesis poeas), American snout
(Libytheana carinenta larvata), Mexican fritillary (Euptoieta hegesia
hoffmanni), bordered patch (Chlosyne lacinia crocale), tiny checkerspot
(Dymasia dymas chara), elf (Microtia elva), tropical leafwing (Anaea aidea
troglodyta), empress leillia (Asterocampa leillia cocles), and queen (Danaus
gilippus strigosus), to name a few.  I didn't even have time to look at the
skippers real closely.  There was just too much activity.

After about an hour of zoning out everything but the lep activity, it was
time to continue west along the arroyo.  We had steady puddling parties of
sulfurs, aggressive long-tails, territorial gulf fritillaries (Agraulis
vanillae incarnata), and empress leillia (Asterocampa leillia cocles).  We
got about a quarter of a mile from town when our ride picked us up.  This
took care of our lepping activity for the day.  It became too hot to do much
more.  We ended our day though with an outstanding dinner at Kokie's.  A
fantastic woman whose cooking out did even her wonderful motherly
personality.  This is definitely a place I will be back to on my next visit.

Well off to bed for hopefully a good night's rest because David is taking us
to the Sea of Cortez for birding and butterflying.


 
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