Category Archives: Prairie Photography

Photo of the Week – October 13, 2017

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My favorite photos tend to be those I’ve taken most recently.  I imagine that’s true of most everyone who does any kind of creative work.  I have a tab at the top of the home page for this blog called “Prairie Photos” where you can see some of my favorite photos.  The other day, I looked through them and realized it had been way too long since I’d updated that page, so I remedied that.  Now you can click on that tab (or just click here) and see a batch of some of the photos I’m most proud of.  Here are a few examples…

This photo of prickly poppy (Argemone polyanthemos) was taken this summer.  I think I mainly like it for its simplicity.

Most of the photos included in that collection were taken within the last couple of years, but there are a few older ones that I still like.  Often, those older photos captured a particular moment of serendipity that still evokes strong emotions for me.  Other times, they were the the final result of a lot of trial and error, and my pride in the image comes as much from that effort as from the quality of the photo.

This image of a crab spider and ant was taken back in 2013.  I was photographing the spider when the ant unexpectedly appeared.

This 2015 photo of stiff sunflowers in restored prairie along the Platte River still evokes a strong memory of the morning itself.

I honestly don’t know when this photo was taken. It’s a scan of an old slide. While I don’t remember the date (I could look it up) I definitely remember the moment because I’d been trying for years to find a vantage point from which I could capture the landscape diversity of the Niobrara Valley Preserve and this was the first time I felt successful.  Most of the cedar trees shown in the photo are gone now…

I have countless photos of stiff sunfllower (Helianthus pauciflorus), but this 2015 image is my current favorite. I like the color and composition, but also the fact that the petals are only partially elongated, giving it a different look than more mature flowers.

This katydid photo from 2014 is still one of my favorites because of the color and composition, but also because I can see its “ears” so clearly on its front elbows.  I use it often to talk about that fascinating anatomical tidbit about katydids.

When I see this 2015 photo, I can still smell the smoke of the prairie fire that scorched the vegetation on and around the big ant mound. I was monitoring the aftermath of our prescribed burn when I found these ants, and was able to capture the heightened activity of the colony as they scrambled to assess their newly exposed condition after the fire.

I have plenty of early morning photos with dew drops in them, but this one (from June 2016) is my current favorite.

One of my biggest aspirations for my photography is to help people see the beauty of prairies.  If you have friends or colleagues who aren’t yet aware of that beauty, maybe you can send them the link to these photos to show them a few examples.

Do it quick, though, before I get tired of these photos and replace them with newer ones!

Back Door Thieves

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I took a quick walk through one of our restored wetlands last week.  Most plants had finished blooming for the year, but in some recently-mowed patches, there were some scattered flowers of beggarticks (Bidens sp) and blue lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica). I knelt down to look more closely at some small bees I spotted crawling around on the lobelia flowers.

I saw one bee crawl in and out of one of the flowers, but for the most part, the bees (and a few flies) were all hanging around at the base of the flowers.  As I watched, I saw one slide its long tongue into the flower.  I couldn’t tell if it opened up a hole or just took advantage of one that was already there.  Either way, it was apparently “stealing” nectar from the flower through a back window rather than entering politely through the front door.

A bee inserts its tongue into the base of a lobelia flower while two flies loiter nearby.

Another bee stealing nectar.

I sent photos and questions to both Jennifer Hopwood and Mike Arduser, who are always generous about sharing their expertise with me.  They both agreed with my interpretation, and Mike added some additional information.  He said that blue lobelia flowers have slits in them that make this kind of nectar robbing pretty easy for bees.

It seems an odd strategy for a flower to make it easy for bees to steal nectar without providing any pollination services in return.  Maybe the slits serve another purpose and the benefits outweigh the costs.  Or maybe it’s just a random loophole that natural selection hasn’t yet closed.  Regardless, blue lobelia plants tend to produce copious amounts of seed, so the flowers must get enough front door visitors to do the job.

In addition to the bees, there were a lot of flies hanging around the flowers too.  Flies have pretty short tongues, and it didn’t look like any of them were sticking those tongues into the flower slits.  Instead, they seemed to be feeding on the outside surface of the flower.  Maybe nectar was seeping through those flower slits?  Or maybe the bees were a little sloppy with their drinking and the bees were cleaning up after them?  Whatever the reason, I saw at least as many flies as bees on the flowers, so there must have been some attraction.

Flies were crawling around the bases of the flowers too, apparently feeding on the leftovers.

I wish now that I’d spent more time examining the flowers, and that I’d brought one home with me so I could look at the slits under a scope.  However, I hadn’t really planned to stop at the wetland, let alone to kneel down in the mud to look at bees stealing nectar from hapless flowers.  Also, my neck was starting to throb a little from holding my head at an uncomfortable angle necessary to photograph the bees.  Instead of sticking around to learn more, I took my camera, my muddy jeans, and my sore neck back to the truck and headed home.

Little cheater…