#palominas

Silverleaf horsenettle (Solanum elaeagnifolium), Palominas, Arizona.

Triops longicaudatus in an ephemeral monsoon puddle, Palominas, Arizona.

One of the ephemeral puddles I saw on my Palominas walk was supporting several thousand tadpoles, probably nymphs of Couch’s spadefoot (Scaphiopus couchii), the most common spadefoot species in Cochise County. It is a perilous environment for a little tadpole. The puddle is habitable only as long as the scattered and unpredictable monsoon rains last, then the desert asserts itself and the world goes dry again. Like many small creatures adapted to harsh and unstable conditions, spadefoots are masters of the fast life history. The strategy: find a puddle, lay thousands of eggs, and maybe a tadpole or two will complete their metamorphosis before the puddle evaporates. Few will live to reproductive age. 

I chose to photograph them in an abstracted and impressionistic way rather than with a documentary approach. Most of the tadpoles I saw were massed together, not swimming freely. A solitary tadpole can be cute, but not a great wriggling glob of them. Even so, they are beautiful in their way, and I wanted to show that, knowing that for the thousands in the puddle there will be a profligate die off few tadpoles will survive.