Recently, I’ve spent some time mining my photo library for images to use in a couple different projects. While I was down that hole, I took advantage of the process to build some collections of some of my favorite photos and post them on their own web page. I hope the photos help inspire people to see prairies as something worth caring about. Feel free to send the link to anyone who hasn’t yet been bitten by the prairie bug. (Maybe don’t use that phrase with them, though.)
Now, on to this week:
One of the best things about being a photographer is that it encourages me to seek out and appreciate beauty in the world around me. The serenity that comes from that exercise has become a necessity in my life. Geez, that sounds sappy, huh? I can’t help it. It really is a big deal to me.
Silver maple leaf in Lincoln Creek.
Last week, I made two trips to my favorite stretch of Lincoln Creek, which runs right through town here in Aurora, Nebraska. It’s not what most people would call a “pretty” stream along most of its length. In fact, many people would probably call it more of a storm drain than a stream. In the fall, though, a lot of the bare dirt on its steep eroded banks is covered by fallen leaves. That spruces it up a little (even though the leaves are from silver maples, not spruce trees – hardee har har).
Here’s the section of Lincoln Creek where I spent a couple hours photographing floating leaves last week.
During my two visits last week, I spent a couple blissful hours admiring the many thousands of leaves floating on the water, searching for photo compositions I liked. I was able to forget about the rest of the world for a little while and just focus on finding beauty. I highly recommend it – with or without a camera.
Here is a very small selection (percentage-wise) of the photos I took during those two trips. If you want to make a little game out of looking through the photos, see if you can find the one leaf that’s included in two photos. I’m pretty sure there’s just the one. You’re also welcome to just enjoy the photos without trying to win a game. It’s up to you. Also, I’m really sorry about that awful “spruce it up” joke.
The fall migration is in full swing through our prairies. Dragonflies, birds, butterflies, and more are moving southward. Going out on dewy mornings is a great way to check up on butterflies and dragonflies because I can find them immobile and covered in dew on their overnight roosts. This week was a big week for variegated meadowhawks (dragonflies), apparently. I found dozens of them at our family prairie one morning (more photos toward the end of this post).
Variegated meadowhawk at sunrise. Helzer family prairie.
There are lots of little brown birds skulking in the vegetation this week. Many of them are grassland sparrows of various species, but there also were a bunch of sedge wrens at our family prairie. Most of those birds are hard to see unless you flush them while walking through the prairie, but just standing still is also a good way to hear them as they rustle around in patches of tall grass. The sedge wrens made it easy because they not only rustled, they also called to each other with their machine gun songs (“Dot Dot d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d!”).
One of many sedge wrens hiding in the grass this week.
Monarchs are far from the only migratory butterfly (not to mention moths) coming through. I’ve seen a lot of painted lady butterflies this week and found a few orange sulphurs that (probably?) were on the move. There was a cluster of pearl crescent butterflies in our yard this week, too, but as far as I know, those aren’t migratory. They looked like they’d all recently emerged as adults, so they’d better hurry if they’re going to lay eggs before freezing temperatures hit!
Orange sulphur in the morning dew.
As I see the abundance of flies still active at this time of year, I can’t help wondering how many of them are migrants. A year ago, I wrote a post complaining about the lack of North American research on migratory flies. I’m sure that spurred a flurry of activity among researchers (eye roll) and that we’ll soon know a lot more about the topic. In the meantime, I’m left to wonder, especially about all the different drone flies and hover flies I see. Are they just scrambling to eat (and lay eggs?) before frost? Or are they fueling up during a long southward journey?
A gorgeous dew-covered fly. Is it a migrant or resident? I don’t have any idea. Lincoln Creek Prairie.
Most insects, of course, don’t migrate, so they have to survive Nebraska winters however they can. That usually involves finding a sheltered place to hide and then just withstanding freezing conditions. Species vary in terms of whether they go through winter as adults, eggs, or larvae/nymphs. All of those options seem to work ok.
This katydid thought it was hiding from me on an early morning this week. I’m not sure whether this species lives through the winter as adults or eggs. Another shot of the same katydid.Male American bumblebee (Bombus pensylvanicus) roosting on the underside of a tall thistle leaf.
A lot of the individual insects out and around now will simply die as winter hits. The only bumblebees, for example, that survive the winter are the fertilized females that will be next year’s queens. Everyone else in the colony will perish at the end of this season. Other insects that lay eggs before winter will also die after completing that task. I imagine that abundance of dead insects provides a big bonanza of food for any animals out poking around after the first big freeze or two. If not, bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms will clean up the rest.
This caterpillar was literally hanging around on some big bluestem (remarkably camouflaged!) this week. I imagine it’ll spend much of the winter frozen solid, either as a caterpillar or pupa.Stink bug on big bluestem.
Plants are also shutting down for the year. Most wildflowers and grasses are finished blooming and have produced seeds if they can. Perennial prairie plants are also making buds. Woody plants make buds aboveground where new leaves or stems will emerge next year so the plants can continue to grow larger (assuming they don’t get burned, chewed, or cut down). Herbaceous plants, though, including grasses, wildflowers, and sedges, create buds at their bases, usually right below the surface of the soil.
Over the winter, the entire aboveground portion of perennial herbaceous plants dies back. In the spring, though, those plants will start a new season of growth from their basal buds. Seeds are still important for those perennials, though, both because it allows them to combine DNA with others of their species (cross-pollination) and because it lets them spread progeny into new places. Seed dispersal strategies are fascinating and beautiful, and it’s a fun time of year to see a lot of them in action.
Indiangrass seeds dangling from a seed head, ready to be carried off by a breeze or passing animal.This milkweed seeds are poised to fly off in the wind once the sun dries the dew drops from them.
Late summer and early fall are great times for dewy mornings. Those water droplets are a boon for insect photographers, but they also make nice photo subjects on their own.
Dew drop hanging from a leaf after sunrise.Another dew drop on a leaf.
Back to the abundance of variegated meadowhawks this week… I can’t remember seeing so many at a time before, but that doesn’t mean much. I tried to quickly photograph a selection of those I found at our family prairie one morning, but I just kept finding more and more. Here are the ones I managed to photograph:
There was one dragonfly in particular that was perched attractively on top of some stiff goldenrod as the sun came up. I circled back to it a couple times as it started warming up and managed to photograph it from multiple angles while it was still too cold and wet to fly away. All the rest of the photos below are of that same individual.
I don’t know how much longer this late season flurry of activity will last, so I’m trying to catch as much of it as I can. I’ve gotten behind on some projects because I’m trying to see things before they’re gone, but I’ll have the whole winter to catch up, right?
The Prairie Ecologist 