Prairies are really waking up in this part of the world. There’s a lot of green out there, an increasing number of wildflowers, and a big influx of breeding and migratory birds. Invertebrates are slowly becoming more abundant, too, though “slowly” is the operative word there, at least for impatient macro photographers like me.

Late last week, the Fellows and I took some time to explore one of our Platte River Prairies that has a lot of sedge meadow habitat (the same site I found all the pill bugs at the week before that). We saw lots of spring flowers, including sedges, but I didn’t take any photos of those. I did, though, pull out my camera when we saw a group of about 50 white-faced ibis feeding along the edge of the property.

The ibis weren’t the only migratory water birds around. There were about 50 yellowlegs around as well, along with some solitary sandpipers, phalaropes, and some others we couldn’t identify. They all seemed to be enjoying the pools of water in the low-lying parts of the prairie.

We next walked into the drier part of the prairie, where historic river channels had created tall ridges of sand prairie vegetation, to see how one of our recent burns was looking. It was looking green. I also relocated a big ant mound I’d seen earlier in the spring (after the fire) and we got to watch ants for a while. They were really active. I don’t know enough about them to interpret their behavior, but while a few were bringing in food, most of them seemed to just be swarming around. There were a couple winged ones in the mix, which might have had something to do with it. (I didn’t manage any sharp photos of the winged ants.)

As we worked our way back south into the wetter part of the prairie, Claire and I sloshed right past a snake that Kees spotted as he followed behind us. We stopped to admire the big plains garter swimming in the shallow water. For whatever reason (cool weather? standing water and available cover?), it chose to stay and try to hide instead of just streaking away from us. I grabbed my camera and squatted in the shallow water, trying to get some photos. I got the one below, but I couldn’t get the angle I wanted from that position.

Eventually, I decided to just bite the bullet and get wet. If the snake was going to be accommodating, it seemed silly to waste the opportunity just because I’d be soggy (and cold – it was cool and breezy) for my drive home. I eased myself down onto my knees and elbows in the water and started to slowly maneuver closer to the snake. The fellows stood back and watched, dry, comfortable, and bemused.

My muck boots immediately filled with water and my knees were instantly wet and cold. My elbows, however, didn’t get wet right away. I was wearing my chore coat over a sweatshirt that claimed to be water resistant and the claim was proving to be true. Eventually, I did get wet elbows, but it took an impressively long time for that to happen. Meanwhile, the snake and I were doing a little dance as I tried to position myself so I could see its head and it tried to avoid making eye contact.

I managed to get several nice photos and then decided to leave the poor snake alone. As I stood up, though, I realized I had another challenge in front of me. Both my boots and my sleeves were full of water. The boots weren’t a big deal – a little water slopping around my feet is fine. But the sleeves became an issue when I tried to put my camera back in the bag.

As I lowered my hand toward the bag, a stream of water ran down my arm, over my camera and into the bag. I quickly raised my hand up again and tried to think of a way to return the camera to the bag without getting it wet or ending up with a little pond in my bag. The best solution, of course, would have been to hand the camera to either Claire or Kees and ask them to help. However, I didn’t think of that at the time and they seemed too entertained to offer assistance.

I stood for a minute, trying to drain as much water as I could from each sleeve and consider my options – not ALL my options, obviously, just the ones my waterlogged self could immediately come up with. Eventually, I just went for speed and dropped the camera into the bag as quickly as I could, figuring I’d towel it off when I got back to the truck. I only ended up with a coffee cup’s worth of water in the bag with my gear… What a ridiculous situation. Fortunately, both the photographer and his camera gear eventually dried out and seem to have retained their basic functions.

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Over the weekend, I made the short trip up to Prairie Plains Resource Institute’s Gjerloff Prairie to see how spring was progressing in that upland loess hills grassland. It was a beautiful evening, though the scattered clouds I’d hoped would stick around left the area as I arrived. While I waited for the evening sun to drop low enough to provide good photo light, I scouted the area for good shot opportunities.

Clay-colored and Harris’ sparrows were making a lot of noise and I saw my first eastern kingbird of the spring. A few insects were around, including lots of little moths of at least several species. When a little damselfly landed on a nearby stem, I tried to get close enough for a photo, but it took off. I watched it fly a few feet to another grass stem and attempt to land there. As it did, though, the grass suddenly reached out with its little legs and tried to grab it.

Or, at least, that’s what it looked like, until I realized there was a well-camouflaged spider waiting to ambush any unwary visitor. The damselfly escaped unharmed, though I’m not sure that was because the spider missed. I think maybe the spider just decided the damselfly was more than it wanted to deal with. It’s hard to say. Either way, I spent a few minutes admiring and photographing the spider and lost track of the damselfly altogether.

As the light improved toward sunset, I stopped in a big patch of hoary vetchling (Lathyrus polymorphus). Photographing this plant is kind of an annual tradition for me, and I’m always looking for new ways to do it. I was pretty pleased with this year’s attempts.

Finally, after the sun dropped completely below the horizon, I started hiking slowly back toward my vehicle. As I did, I noticed a little common checkered skipper perched on a sunflower skeleton. It seemed like it had settled in for the night, so I set up my tripod and worked on a few different compositions to capture it silhouetted against the thin orange glow in the distance. The photo below is my favorite, though I shared several others on my Instagram page for those of you who partake in that particular social media app.

I hope you’re all enjoying the spring in your local prairies (except for those of you in the southern hemisphere where winter is coming). Everyone is starting to reappear on the scene after the long winter holiday, ready for another great year.

The Platte River Prairies got four to five inches of rain last week, filling up the sloughs (old river channels) in many of our floodplain prairies. This will help quite a bit with the lingering drought conditions we’ve been dealing with. It also provided a chance to photograph some of our sedge meadows with standing water, something I’ve not had much opportunity to do over the last couple years.

I wasn’t able to get out on Friday, but arrived at one of our prairies before sunrise on Saturday. I was wearing rain pants, rain jacket, and neoprene boots, anticipating that I’d be wading through and kneeling in shallow water. As it happened, I also laid down several times, which my rain suit wasn’t completely adapted to. It made for a damp ride home, but it was well worth it.

I spent most of my time along a single large slough that still had half a foot or more of water in it. The water level had clearly dropped during the previous day and was gently running to the east, where it would eventually meet up with the Platte River. It was a peaceful, beautiful morning, with birds singing and a light breeze rustling the leaves of last year’s prairie plants.

I took some photos of the landscape, complete with moon and colorful clouds, before the sun rose, and noted the calls of the first grasshopper sparrows and eastern meadowlarks I’d heard this year. The vast majority of meadowlarks in the Platte River Prairies are the western species, but I think this site has had a few eastern meadowlarks present each year for at last 30 years now. I wonder if it’s the same multi-generational family through time.

Usually, big rain events strands ground-dwelling invertebrates in the vegetation above standing water, waiting for the water to recede. One of this year’s Hubbard Fellows (Kees) had sent me photos from the this site the previous day showing a bunch of pill bugs (aka sow bugs, rolly polies, or woodlice) that had retreated upward. Sure enough, they were still there.

I was a little surprised not to see the scads of ants I’ve seen after other storms. I wonder if that’s because the ground beneath the standing water is usually saturated enough that it prevents ant burrowing. In other words, maybe ants weren’t living in the area that flooded. If the water had spread out to the broader landscape, covering more mesic prairie, maybe it would have stranded more ants? I didn’t see many beetles or other insects either. Pill bugs, though, were very abundant. I saw clusters of up to 50 or more on the same plant.

I hope you appreciate the above photo because taking it led to the first seepage of water between my rain jacket and rain pants. I’d been doing well propping myself on my elbows and keeping my mid-section out of the water (those planking exercises were paying off!) but for this shot I had to extend a little further into the slough to get the right angle. The things I do for dumb bug photos…

I came across a few big white scarab beetle larvae floating or stranded in shallow water. Most seemed to be still alive. Going back to my ants-in-saturated-soil hypothesis, I wondered if they’d actually been underground beneath the slough. It seemed unlikely, but what do I know? My guess was that they might have come up to the surface in higher areas when the heavy rains saturated the soil they’d been in. Then they might have been washed into the sloughs from there. Counter hypotheses (or facts) are welcome…

As the sun rose, I took some more landscape photos, including the one below, which was a nearly identical framing as that of the first photo of this post. An hour’s difference in the light, though, makes the photo look pretty different!

Most of our wetland and wet prairie sedge species are blooming right now and it was fun to see a lot of them around. Sedge identification can be pretty tricky under the best circumstances, but all the keys I have rely on the sedges being the seed stage. When they’re actively flowering, all I can do is guess based on the location, height and density of the plants, and sometimes the growth form. One the flowering period is over, there’s a window of time in which I can look at features like perigynia, spikelets, stigmas, pistillate scales and other fun botanically-named plant structures that allow me to distinguish between species.

We’re lucky in Nebraska that the Flora of Nebraska has an excellent dichotomous key for sedge identification. Some of the terminology can be a little intimidating at first, but if you’re motivated, I’d encourage you to dive in and give it a try. Once you can start identifying species, you can marvel at the diversity of sedge species in prairies and wetlands! Not surprisingly, in plant communities called “sedge meadows”, sedges make up a pretty important part of the ecosystem…

This might be a good time for a quick rant. Even if it’s not a good time I’m gonna do it.

You may have heard the phrase “sedges have edges”, or the longer version, “sedges have edges, rushes are round”. These are dumb and nearly useless phrases, in my humble (but strong) opinion. The “edges” part refers to the idea that sedges are supposed to have a triangular stem in cross section. When you roll the stems in your fingers, you can feel the “edges” of that triangle.

The problem is that while all (most?) sedges have leaves that extend out in three directions, not all of them have noticeable triangular stems or edges. Even worse, other wetland graminoids like bulrushes often have very distinct triangular stems with obvious edges. That pretty much spoils the value of the phrases, doesn’t it? Let’s all agree to stop using the “sedges have edges” thing, ok? The fact that it rhymes doesn’t make it accurate.

Thank you for listening.

It’ll be interesting to see if last week’s rain is enough to pull the Platte River Prairies out of the “moderate drought” category on the Drought Monitor website. Regardless, the precipitation was probably enough to significantly change the competitive balance in our plant communities for at least the next month or two.

We’re constantly applying fire, grazing, haying, rest, and other treatments to the prairies, each of which can favor some plant species while suppressing others – depending upon treatment timing, intensity, duration, and other variables. Weather patterns, though, also play a very significant role in determining which plants will find favorable conditions to grow, bloom, and thrive each year. Our prairies look very different in dry years than in wet years.

Of course, wet and dry conditions also affect animal and other communities as well. As we’re seeing right now, rapid changes in water levels and soil moisture can affect species like pill bugs, ground beetles, ants, and many others. At the same time, those new conditions will be really attractive to all the shorebirds and other water birds migrating through, as well as those looking for local nesting sites.

Looking beyond short-term changes, though, if this turns out to be a fairly wet year, it’ll have positive and negative consequences for lots of animals. While lush vegetation growth will be great for many, higher rates of fungal infections and other pathogens can be problematic as well. Pollinators and other invertebrates that specialize on plants that thrive in wet years will celebrate, but those that focus on plants more adapted to dry conditions won’t find as many opportunities.

Either way, diverse prairies are well-adapted to variability in weather and other factors. As managers, our job is to facilitate the species diversity that maintains that adaptability. And, of course, we can admire and celebrate the ways in which prairies flex and modify themselves to meet whatever comes.