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- Photo of the Week – May 26, 2017
- Plant Game! (May 23, 2017)
- Photo of the Week – May 19, 2017
- The Joy, Angst, Excitement and Dread of Walking Through a Young Restored Prairie
- Photo of the Week – May 12, 2017
- 2017 Field Days! (And a Photo Question)
- Photo of the Week – May 5, 2017
- Frosty Monarchs
- Photo of the Week – April 28, 2017
- How Small Is Too Small?
- Photo of the Week – April 20, 2017
- Not Yet, Monarchs, Not Yet!
- Photo of the Week – April 13, 2017
- Spring Obsession
- Burning For Good Reasons
- Photo of the Week – April 6, 2017
- Hubbard Fellowship Blog – The Nature of Human Intervention
- Photo of the Week – March 31, 2017
- Now You See Them, Now You Don’t (But They Might Still Be There!)
- Photo of the Week – March 24, 2017
Author Archives: Chris Helzer
Photo of the Week – May 26, 2017
Shell leaf penstemon (Penstemon grandiflorus) is one of the showier wildflowers in the Platte River Prairies during late May and early June. It is most often found in dry soils and where the surrounding plants aren’t overly competitive. We often … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Animals, Prairie Insects, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Photography
Tagged Ectemnius, flies, hollow, penstemon, prairie, stem, wasp
4 Comments
Plant Game! (May 23, 2017)
The rules are simple. Just pick the fake plant name from each list. Three of the names in each list are official names of plants found in Nebraska. The other is one that I made up. See if you can … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
6 Comments
Photo of the Week – May 19, 2017
Over the last five years or so, I’ve been learning a lot more about pollinators, and that has changed the way I look at prairies. As I walk around our prairies, I often think about how I would see the … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Insects, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Photography
Tagged bee, butterfly, migration, monarch, nectar, pollen, pollinators, spring, spring flowers
10 Comments
The Joy, Angst, Excitement and Dread of Walking Through a Young Restored Prairie
Anyone who has watched a prairie seeding go through its first several years of establishment will appreciate and identify with this post. For those of you who haven’t, the best analogy I can come up with is that the experience … Continue reading
Photo of the Week – May 12, 2017
When you look closely at Penstemon angustifolius, it’s easy to see why one of its common names is narrowleaf beardtongue. Narrowleaf beardtongue is a widespread Great Plains wildflower that can have blue, lavender, or pink flowers – often, all on … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Natural History, Prairie Photography, Prairie Plants
Tagged angustifolius, beardtongue, penstemon
6 Comments
2017 Field Days! (And a Photo Question)
Mark your calendars if you’re interested in attending either or both of our Platte River Prairies Field Days this summer. The first will be on Thursday July 6, and will be focused on plant identification. We’ll have several instructors on … Continue reading
Photo of the Week – May 5, 2017
During the last week, I’ve been lucky enough to find and photograph two different wolf spiders, so I figured I should probably dedicate a short blog post to them. The first wolf spider I found was a cute little bugger … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Insects, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Photography
Tagged close up, eye pattern, lycosidae, macro, photography, wolf spider
11 Comments
Frosty Monarchs
Adding insult to injury, the overly-ambitious monarchs in Nebraska this spring had to deal with cold wet weather all last weekend. Temperatures got down to about 30 degrees F, and maybe lower in some places, and much of the prairie … Continue reading
Posted in Prairie Insects, Prairie Natural History, Prairie Photography
Tagged butterfly, cold, early migration, frost, migration, monarch, monarch butterfly, nebraska, prairie, rain, too early, wet weather
7 Comments
Photo of the Week – April 28, 2017
Ten days ago, I wrote about monarch butterflies returning from Mexico and flying much further north than is typical, and some of the risks they face because of that. Many of you responded with your own similar observations and stories of … Continue reading
How Small Is Too Small?
What’s the minimum effective size of a prairie? For example, can a prairie be the size of a kitchen table? Let’s say someone converted a landscape full of prairie to an immense gravel parking lot, leaving only a round kitchen … Continue reading
