Photo of the Week – July 14, 2017

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We had a great time at the Grassland Restoration Network meeting at Konza Prairie this week.  The long-term research going on there is phenomenal, and we were blissfully overwhelmed with knowledge and data about prairie ecology.  I will try to synthesize some of that information into a blog post or two, but it might take me a while to digest it and figure out how to share it.

Compass plant at sunrise

In the meantime, one of many highlights of the trip for me was the hour or so of early morning photography I managed to squeeze in right around the headquarters of Konza Prairie.  As the sun came up, I wandered around prairie full of compass plant (Silphium laciniatum), a plant that sorta looks like, but isn’t, a tall sunflower.  There were lots of other plants and animals around too, but compass plant was clearly the star of the show, standing at least three or four feet taller than the surrounding vegetation and blooming audaciously.  It was hard to point my camera toward anything else.  As a result, today’s post is a kind of tribute to compass plant…

A blooming compass plant is surrounded by the huge beautiful leaves of non-blooming companions.

This tree cricket was one of many creatures, including lots of bees, enjoying the pollen of compass plant flowers.

Dickcissels were using compass plant as singing perches, but occasionally seemed to be feeding on them as well (or maybe just trying to get the sticky rosin off their feet – I couldn’t really tell.

Few of our prairies in central Nebraska have compass plant – we’re on the far western edge of its range. It’s too bad. Compass plants add a great architectural structure to prairies that the sunflowers and other tall plants in our prairies don’t quite achieve.

Spider Watching

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I think this is a juvenile Argiope spider.  With its legs fully spread, it was about the diameter of a quarter, and its web was about the size of my hand.

During a brief stop at our family’s prairie this morning, I noticed a small spider on its web, and set up my tripod to see if I could photograph it.  Just after I got a couple nice photos, a grasshopper nymph blundered into its web, and the spider leapt into action.  I tried to get pictures of it as it was quickly wrapping the little grasshopper, but I only managed one – it was moving quickly, and there was some vegetation in the way.

I managed to get this shot when the spider paused briefly while wrapping the grasshopper nymph. The image is a little fuzzy because I was shooting through some grass leaves, trying not to disturb the action.

However, once it had its prey stabilized, the spider slowed down and I was able to watch and photograph it for the next 10 minutes or so as it waited for the nymph to become sufficiently paralyzed.  When I finally had to leave, the spider hadn’t yet started to feed.  Instead, it was perched above the nymph with two legs resting on the nymph like it was feeling for a pulse.  Every time the nymph twitched, the spider quickly pulled its legs back as if it had touched a hot stove.  Very carefully, I pulled my tripod away and left the spider to its meal.

This was shortly after the spider finished the wrapping process. You can still see the silk attached to its spinnerets (near its rear end).

…waiting for the grasshopper to stop kicking… I assume spider got to eat it eventually, but I had to get to work.