Photo of the Week – December 1, 2017

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Back in July, my daughter tagged along with me on a trip to the Niobrara Valley Preserve.  Because she’s in college now, and I don’t see her all that often, it was particularly gratifying to have a few days of concentrated time together.  On the last morning of our trip, we decided to hike the Preserve’s public trail through some hills overlooking the Niobrara River and its valley.

The peacefulness of this scene belies the violence that had taken place only a few moments before…

Not long after we started walking, I heard a cicada burst out of the grass in front of us and loudly rattle off into the prairie.  It was a sound we’d heard many times over the previous days, but this time, instead of fading gradually away, the sound stopped suddenly, only a second or so after it started.   A couple steps later, my brain finally identified the anomaly and I turned around and walked in the direction the cicada had flown.  I found it where it had landed, and quickly saw why its flight had been cut short.  The cicada was lying on the ground, making short buzzing noises, and there was a big robber fly sitting right on top of it.  The scene was particularly impressive given the size of the cicada (about the size of my thumb) compared to the much smaller fly.

Despite being significantly smaller than the massive cicada, the robber fly brought it down pretty quickly , and seemed to know just where to insert its proboscis between the chinks in the cicada’s armor.

Robber flies are common in prairies, and we’d been seeing quite a few hanging around during the previous weeks.  I knew they were voracious predators, but had never seen one take down another animal so much bigger than itself.  Only a year ago, I got to watch one intercept and kill a tiger beetle that was trying to fly away from me.  Watching that robber fly come out of nowhere to knock a beetle out of the air was impressive, but at least in that case the predator was a lot bigger than its prey.

I photographed this robber fly just a week or so before the cicada attack.

Since I didn’t actually see this particular attack, I can only assume the robber fly followed the typical robber fly script.  It was probably perched nearby, scanning the skies for prey, and as the cicada lifted off, the robber fly launched itself like a guided missile and rammed into the cicada, knocking it to the ground.  Then, it must have very quickly employed its hypotharynx (modified mouthparts) to inject a toxin into the cicada.  That toxin rapidly immobilized, and eventually liquefied the cicada’s insides.  By the time I arrived on the scene, the cicada was already close to death, and certainly wasn’t going anywhere.  Anna and I didn’t want to disturb the robber fly’s meal, so we walked on, leaving the fly to suck the cicada shell dry – a well-earned meal.

A Brief Note on Painted Milkvetch

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Painted milkvetch (Astragalus ceramicus) is a beautiful plant found in open sandy soils throughout much of the Great Plains and western U.S.  It is a perennial legume with white to pinkish flowers, but is most easily recognized by its ornate seed pods, which resemble painted eggs.  In Nebraska, the plant is often associated with blowouts (open areas of active wind erosion) in the Sandhills region.

Painted milkvetch is known for its ornate seed pods that are an inch or two in length.

Unfortunately, I’ve just exhausted the sum total of information I have on painted milkvetch.  I could only come up with a paltry 78 words to describe this amazing plant.  The reason it’s so unfortunate is that I don’t have anything else prepared for this week’s blog post, and don’t really have time to start from scratch on a new topic.  I had three nice photos of painted milkvetch ready to go, and figured I’d just do some quick research and create a nice little blog post on the natural history of the species.  Is it my fault nobody seems to have pulled together fascinating factoids on painted milkvetch and made them easily accessible to those of us trying to entertain and inform the public?  Don’t answer that.

Painted milkvetch really likes open sandy areas like this one.

By this time, you’ve probably realized there isn’t going to be any additional information of interest to you.  I’m sorry to waste your time by leading you on like this, but I’m hoping many people will just scan the first paragraph, look at the photos, and click on to something else of interest on the internet.  Maybe they’ll check the score of the big game last night, or see what the weather is going to be so they know whether they need to pack a stocking cap or umbrella for the day.  If so, they’ll never know that the rest of this blog post is just me blithering on about nothing in order to make it look like there’s a full blog post’s worth of information here.  Because there isn’t.

I mean, I could give you a description of the shape and size of the leaves, and general stature of the plant, but the photos pretty much show you what you need to know, right?  What I really wanted was some cool stories about the kinds of animals that feed on the leaves or seeds of the plant, specialist pollinators that use its flowers, or maybe even a description of the kind of chemical or physical properties the plant uses to compete with surrounding plants.  I bet you’d have liked to learn things like that too, but I didn’t find anything.  Again, I apologize for that.

Well, now I’m at about 460 words, which is certainly more respectable than 78 words.  I mean, 78 words is basically just a long caption.  No one would consider it sufficient for a blog post.  Now, if I can figure out how to get to 500 words, that will be