An annoying problem has developed with the publication schedule of the Black Range Naturalist (BRN). I sometimes receive material which is excellent but the publication schedule of the BRN does not support timely publication of the material; drafts of the next two BRN’s may be close to final for instance. I may be working on a future issue of the BRN which is nine months out. Publishing something nine months after I receive it is not timely. So I (Bob Barnes) have decided to revisit the idea of publishing a blog on the Black Range (BR) website, to address this particular problem.
This blog (“Natural History Blog”) will be focused on getting material out there for people to see and react to, rather than on providing a researched piece. It apparently will not focus on catchy blog names.
Please provide your comments directly to me at rabarnes@blackrange.org.
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How I View Nature Through My Art - by Melody Sears
I believe most people are mainly visual beings, and I would guess virtually everyone with the capacity for sight has felt stirrings deep within themselves when they see something "beautiful.” The "beautiful" varies between us humans, but we each have the capacity to appreciate what we find beautiful.
I am an artist who primarily paints landscapes, relying on views that make me sigh with pleasure. What grabs my eye varies from mountains to creeks, grasses to trees, cloudscapes to critters. Nevertheless, whatever subject I find beautiful always has elements of contrast in colors, shadows and shapes. Specifically, these are contrasts of lights vs. darks ("values" in artist-talk); contrasts of color (such as yellows vs. violets); contrasts of size and shape (think of a vast ocean view with seagulls flying overhead); as well as movement through the scene that allows the viewer's eye to travel and wander up and down, side to side, forward and back.
Example One: Hoodoo Hillside
This image, west of Hillsboro and seen in full sunlight, was a marvel. The contrasts are dramatic: orange rocks against blue sky and green grass; dark foliage in shadow vs. light green bushes and grass in sunlight; small rock shapes in the distance vs. a large bank of rock in the foreground; and the zig-zag movement of rocks, grass, and foliage that encouraged my eyes to walk up and down the hillside, noticing more and more as I wandered. Everything about it was exciting and dramatic. It grabbed me and I immediately started to paint it mentally, imagining the contrasts I needed to push to ensure it would look as compelling in pastel as it felt in real life.
Example Two: Reverence
Although quieter and less dramatic than Hoodoo Hillside, this painting of Percha Creek relies on the same contrast of elements. Value is obvious by the mostly shadowed areas (darks) contrasted to the distant sunlit grasses and bright water (lights). Color contrasts include reddish-brown dirt under blue-green grasses in the foreground, and blues in the water against distant yellow grasses and dull orange in the trees. Size and shape differences are apparent with various rocks, trees and grasses. Movement starts either with the large rocks lower left and moves up the creek to the upper right, or vice versa. There is also movement from left to middle in the graceful, curving, young tree branches.
This quiet, peaceful scene required lots of shadow, with blues and blue-green pastels predominating. I needed to work slowly and thoughtfully to bring out the serenity I felt when I first saw it. No bravado needed here, just gentleness.
It is often difficult to pinpoint exactly why something strikes us as being beautiful. After decades of painting, the why for me has become deeply ingrained in the presence of contrasts. When you are out walking or driving and you find a beautiful sight, I suggest you try to notice the contrasts that are quietly forcing you to find it beautiful: the dark to light values, the subtle or dramatic changes in colors, the variations in size and shapes, and the movement your eyes take when viewing it. For me, nature is a study in contrasts, it knows all the rules, and the beauty we find about us is most likely relying on those rules.
P.S. I mentioned I paint with soft pastels, "soft" because they disintegrate easily. They are shaped like blackboard chalks, but consist not of chalk but rather of pure finely ground colored pigments held together with a minimum amount of binder, allowing them to be shaped into sticks.
Editor’s Note: Melody now paints in Tucson but during her time in Hillsboro we conducted an “interview" with her, featuring her painting. Melody Sears - Pastel Paintings of the Southwest may be viewed in a video gallery on Vimeo (follow title link). It is also an embedded video on our “People of the Black Range” page. Whichever link you follow you will be treated to the technique and philosophy of her art. You may also wish to visit her website: Melody Sears Fine Art.
A Seepwillow Flower Cluster
On September 7 of this year I was in Warm Springs Wash, northeast of Hillsboro. I was there to photograph and video what we commonly call Tarantula Wasps. Those things with fascinating, and relatively common, natural history involving paralizing spiders and laying eggs on them.
The obvious place to look was in the Seepwillow (a.k.a. Multe Fat), Baccharis salicifolia, which grows in the wash - especially at the northern end near the springs.
Most of the Seepwillow seemed to be devoid of any insect activity but I found a few plants which were swarming with bees, wasps, and butterflies. On some flower clusters I found as many as four species of wasp/bee and two species of butterfly. They were continually bumping into each other - in a very non-aggressive manner.
Trying to determine the species of the bees and wasps has turned out to be very difficult. Not only because of my lack of expertise and capability but also because there are hundreds of species to consider.
The Stictiella pulchella pictured above was one of the wasps I encountered. I do not collect specimens (and would not know what to do with them if I did) so I am reduced to image matching in my identification efforts. To arrive at a finding of Stictiella pulchella I looked at over 814 pages of images, most pages having scores of photographs, in BugGuide - after determining that it was probably in the family Crabronidae. The folks at BugGuide concur, at this point, that the individual shown above is in the subtribe Stictiellina which includes the genus Stictiella.
What’s Next: I am working on an article about the critters I find on Seepwillow (seemed like a thing). It will include this little Butterfly-wolf Wasp (doesn’t that name cause you to salivate in anticipation) as well as Scoliid Wasps and some butterflies. The article will either be in the July 2026, or maybe the October, issue of the Black Range Naturalist.
Woodhouse's Toad & AI
I am not sure what is more scary for me; the capabilities of Large Language Models (pros and cons) or their propensity to get things wrong. And wrong in this case is contextual. Is it wrong in fact because of error or a lack of capability? Or, is it wrong because of self-interest (and the term is used advisedly)? In both ways it can be uncanningly human.
Some time ago Tom Lander, Kingston, sent me the image above, of a Woodhouse's Toad, Anaxyrus woodhousii. A nice image, other than adding it to one of our species galleries I wondered how I might use it. About that time I was asked to review Google’s Gemini image generator. I was playing so I asked Gemini to take this image and (giving it a set of parameters) generate something. The image below is what I got back.
A Woodhouse’s Toad model for your home, complete with box and a computer showing the LiDAR imaging software which was used to generate the model. Complete with coffee cups and assorted cables. None of this ever existed. None of this is real.
We do not use AI generated material in any of our publications or on our websites - except in the April 1 press release we include in the Black Range Naturalist.
Highway 152 Zine
Local publishing took a significant leap forward this fall when the first issue of Highway 152 Zine appeared in local venues. The name is eloquent in its description, a small run magazine of the the NM-152 community. Editor Jessica Luther notes that "When creating this zine, my goal was to share some of the voices in our community and to find joy in our shared love of the foothills of the Black Range. I want to spotlight the beauty of relationships and the resilience of our rural lives, to share the personal and intimate stories that highlight who we are and how we live and love here, and to help connect us with one another and to share what this place means to the outside world."
Highway 152 Zine is available in print only and is free of charge. The initial distribution was available at the Black Range Museum, Rio Abajo Rio, the General Store Cafe, and Black Cat Books. The Zine does not include ads and does not claim copyright of the material which it publishes. The initial printing was sponsored by Jessica and Eric Luther. If you would like to sponsor the printing of the next, or some future issue, please contact Jessica Luther at jessica.d.griffin@gmail.com.
Phoradendron villosum, Oak Mistletoe
While searching every Emory Oak twig that I encountered on the 8th for caterpillars I found another oak specialist, Wiens Oak Mistletoe (a.k.a. Cory’s Mistletoe) Phoradendron villosum ([Nuttall] Nuttall ex Engelmann) subsp. coryae. It was prevalent in the oak in the lower part of Trail 796. The mistletoe is developing seed, soon to be dispersed by the local birds.
Oslar's Oakworm Moth Caterpillar
Yesterday I (Bob Barnes) was on the lower part of Scenic Trail 796, just west of the Kingston Cemetery. I was looking for Datana neomexicana to complete an “observation" of the caterpillar of that species which I had started in October of 2022 (see Volume 6, Number 2 of the Black Range Naturalist). No luck.
When I was recording Datana neomexicana in 2022 I was able to photograph the caterpillar of the Oslar’s Oakworm Moth, Anisota oslari. Yesterday, I found these caterpillars again and was able to do a bit of photography and videography. When that material is processed and added to the photo gallery and to Vimeo I will post it on the “What’s New” page. Until then -
What’s Next: A more in-depth discussion of this observation will appear in the July 2026 issue of The Black Range Naturalist.
Eastern Ringtail
One of the techniques we are using to keep our publications up-to-date and to augment their content with new observations is to issue addenda. Today we issued the first addendum to Volume 1 of the Second Edition of the Odonata series. This one describes observations of the Eastern Ringtail in Doña Ana County, both the green and the yellow forms of that species. Let us know how you think this works.
Véronique de Jaeger - Cellphone Photos
There are a number of people who tread lightly through the Black Range carrying little more than some water and a cellphone. The water is under-standable, the cellphone? There is very little cell coverage in the Black Range. The cellphone is for photography or running apps like Merlin, who makes calls from the Black Range?
Véronique de Jaeger, of Kingston, is one of the people who tread lightly with cellphones and the photographs she takes are wonderful depictions of these mountains.
The two top photos are from the east side of the range near Kingston, acknowledging our clear days and the smokey days of our fire season. The bottom photo is from Railroad Canyon on the west side of the Black Range. This year the creek rarely had running water.
Chihuahuan Lyre Snake
Jan Richmond photographed this Chihuahuan Lyre Snake, Trimorphodon vilkinsonii, in Hillsboro on 09 September 2025. It is not commonly observed in our area.
This species is not listed on the USDA Forest Service checklist, but the New Mexico Herpetalogical Society website indicates the range of this species includes Sierra County. The NAFHA website uses Texas Lyresnake as the English common name for this species.
The eyes of this species are vertical (“cats-eye”) and the fangs are at the rear of its mouth. This species is typically found in the foothills, in the Black Range.
Two photographs of this observation will appear in The Reptiles of the Black Range and Adjacent Areas when the second edition is published. The publication date has not been set at this time.
The Mountain Knows The Mountain
Philip Connors has now published four books. His latest is The Mountain Knows The Mountain, published by the University of New Mexico Press last month. Follow the link to the publisher’s review of this book.
Our review is a bit more to the point. Buy the book, read the book, share the book with those you care about. That is what we have done.
Philip Connors is a master of descriptive nuance and he excels in that art in this book. His description of the return of the Rufous Hummingbirds to the summit of Hillsboro Peak is great descriptive natural history and eerily captures our epoch of human history.
“Walk in one-person parade on the meandering path to the place where the berries grow in such abundance the bears blush at their luck.”
- Philip Connors, The Mountain Knows The Mountain
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