Now that our seed collection season here at the BLM state office in Santa Fe is done, I can look back on our field season as a whole. And it has been excellent! Aside from learning a new flora, becoming familiar with a new landscape and new people, and collecting a massive quantity of wild seeds — I have also enjoyed the many casual and surprising encounters that happen while being outside. While my first focus is definitely plants, I also love tiny animals (bugs, macroinvertebrates, insects, arthropods; whatever category they are all tiny animals to me!). I don’t know if I will ever study them seriously or in detail, but I do love to notice their variety.

Following is a selection of the most surprising and fantastic tiny animals I was privileged to encounter while collecting seeds this summer and fall.

An enormous grasshopper at El Malpais National Monument

Somebody very strange at Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument

A lady beetle with beautiful and interesting patterning at El Malpais National Monument

Lady beetles exhibiting some interesting behavior — packing themselves tightly into a Thermopsis montana pod! (in the Santa Fe mountains)

More interesting behavior by lady beetles — clustering themselves in very large groups (in the Sandia mountains)

A delicate, elegant stick bug at the Quivira Coalition’s Red Canyon Ranch

Mating monarchs at the Springs Preserve (Las Vegas, NV) butterfly habitat

An excellent black and yellow garden spider near Socorro, NM

Laura Holloway
Santa Fe (New Mexico State Office), BLM