Tag Archives: close-up photo

Photo of the Week – May 9, 2013

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A red-sided garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis). The Nature Conservancy's Platte River Prairies, Nebraska

A red-sided garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis). The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.  Click on this or other photos for a larger, sharper image.

I ran across this beautiful garter snake in our Platte River Prairies yesterday.  Interestingly, it was almost exactly a year ago that I photographed a mating ball of red-sided garter snakes just a 1/2 mile from where I found this one.  This one may have been looking for love too, but I interrupted it just long enough to get a few photos.

I know snakes evoke strong emotions from many people – and not necessarily in a positive way.  It’s too bad, because if you can stand to look at them up close, they are really beautiful creatures.  I love to study the patterns of scales, especially on the head.  The scales look as if they might have been put together by a master stone mason.

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Photo of the Week – May 2, 2013

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As I wrote in an earlier post, my boys and I were at our family prairie last weekend.  Only three flower species were blooming.  One of those was ground plum (Astragalus crassicarpus, aka buffalo pea), and I took several photos of the flowers as I walked around.  This one was taken as the boys were waiting impatiently for me to get in the truck so we could get home for lunch.  As it turned out, the photo turned out to be my favorite of the day, and the boys didn’t starve.

Ground plum flowers at the Helzer prairie near Stockham, Nebraska.

Ground plum flowers at the Helzer prairie near Stockham, Nebraska.

Besides being an attractive flower in the early spring, ground plum also produces large edible pods that taste like raw peas when they’re still green.  Those pods grow to about an inch in diameter, and resemble plums – especially when they turn red later in the year.

I haven’t yet figured out why ground plum plants that flower in the spring don’t always produce pods.  We had one seed harvest year (2001) in which we collected a 30 gallon barrel full of seed pods from one 60 acre prairie, but I have never seen that kind of production since.  Most years, we do a lot of searching but find little seed – even where we know plants were blooming prolifically in the spring.  I assume it’s a combination of weather, management, and herbivory pressure, but that doesn’t really narrow it down much!