macro | The Prairie Ecologist

I’ve been very lucky so far this month to have a lot of time to wander through prairies with my camera, both during and outside of work hours. Here is a selection of images from the first 10 days of September.

Dotted gayfeather and annual buckwheat at the Niobrara Valley Preserve.

The Niobrara Valley Preserve continues to be accented by huge patches of annual buckwheat (Eriogonum annuum). Last week, I stopped briefly to admire some dotted gayfeather plants, which contrasted beautifully with the buckwheat. While I was lying down with the gayfeather (being very careful not to lie on top of any cacti) a bumble bee stopped by to visit the flowers, which was a pleasant surprise.

Plains sunflower against a backdrop of buckwheat and camphorweed.

Not long after I photographed the gayfeather, I came across an old bison bull hanging out by himself. The rut has ended, so he might have just been resting after a month of chasing cows and fighting off other bulls. My guess, though, is that he was an older bull who skipped all that excitement and has been hanging out by himself all summer. As I watched the bull, I also watched the thunderstorm building behind him and moving off to the east. As always, I photographed the bison from the safety of my vehicle.

A bison stands in front of a building storm.

Later that night, I was about to crawl into my tent (we were hosting a workshop and housing was scarce – plus it was a beautiful night for camping) when I noticed lightning in the distance. The storm that had built behind the bison was still in sight as it moved eastward. I walked the short distance between my tent and the Niobrara River and photographed the storm, the stars, and the river for a while.

A receding thunderstorm over the Niobrara River after dark.

Our new backyard prairie garden is finally starting to come into its own and it’s been fun to see what animals have been drawn in. Yesterday, I saw both a cricket frog and leopard frog, which was surprising, given the distance between us and any water bodies or streams. I didn’t photograph either of them because the lighting was bad, but I did capture a fun portrait of a gorgeous wasp visiting some wild bergamot.

A *Prionyx* wasp on wild bergamot in our backyard.

Lincoln Creek Prairie, my local go-to spot for quick in-town photography jaunts, is getting tall and harder to walk through. Tall prairie plants, though, are fun to silhouette against early and late sunlight.

Maximilian sunflower at Lincoln Creek Prairie.

Garden spiders continue to be abundant and visually apparent at a lot of the prairies I’m visiting right now. I picked one up the other day, just to show someone that they’re harmless. It ran around on my hands but clearly wasn’t happy about it so I let it go back to its web. I say they’re harmless… I mean they’re harmless to us, of course, not to the many smaller invertebrates whose lives end shortly after they encounter the big webs.

I was leaving one of our Platte River Prairies sites the other day, having finished up some data collection, when I saw a garden spider web with thistle seeds stuck to it. The seeds framed the spider itself really nicely and I couldn’t resist stopping to try some photography. Without going into needless details, having to do with topography, vegetation, lens selection, apertures, etc., I couldn’t figure out an angle and composition that matched what I had envisioned in my head. I did eventually get a shot that at least showed what was going on. It’s fine.

Thistle seeds caught in a garden spider web.

Speaking of thistles, a lot of native thistles are producing seeds right now, which is making a lot of birds very happy. Some of the thistles (especially tall thistle – Cirsium altissimum) are still blooming, which is making a lot of monarchs, bumble bees, and other pollinators very happy. I’m always a sucker for floating seeds, both before and after they launch.

Seeds of tall thistle (native wildflower).

I also like playing around with different lighting angles when a photo subject gives me the time for that. The thistle seed above wasn’t going anywhere, so I shot it from multiple directions. The tiny moth below was too cold and wet to complain about my lying down on multiple sides of it, trying out various angles and compositions.

I’m still hearing cicadas in both the prairie and our yard, but I think they’re starting to wane. Grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids, though, are still going strong, making the late summer prairies nice and noisy. The high-pitched whines and buzzes of those insects is sometimes punctured by the machine gun song of sedge wrens, too. Sometimes I like to enjoy an audiobook as I wander the prairie, but it can be hard to focus on the plot when the prairie music is so loud. That’s not a complaint, by the way, just an observation.

Plains dog day cicada – Lincoln Creek Prairie.

I’m seeing a lot of praying mantises right now. I’ve photographed all three of our biggest species over the last month or so. This last week, I found both the native Carolina mantis and the non-native European mantis in situations where they were willing to pose for photos. I’ve seen some Chinese mantises as well, but not recently during times of good light or when I’ve had time to stop and visit.

Carolina mantis at Lincoln Creek Prairie.

Carolina mantis hanging out on a milkweed plant.

Jumping spiders are always adorable, but when they’re hiding in their little silken shelters high up in the vegetation, they’re gosh darned irresistible. Why is irresistible spelled with “ible” at the end instead of “able”? If we’re not able to resist something, shouldn’t it be “able”? Language is so confusing. Don’t bother commenting on this, by the way. I know there are rules for when to use each suffix. I just can’t be bothered to care about those rules.

Anyway, it’s usually hard to photograph spiders in their shelters because they’re hiding. Which is the point, of course. I was able to gently encourage this one to come out and say hello, briefly. I took a couple quick photos before it crawled back into hiding and I left it alone.

An exposed bird dropping moth on Maximilian sunflower. I love its tiny “unicorn horn” above its head.

Nebraska has 10 species of goldenrod, not counting two Euthamia species which are often called “grassleaf goldenrods”. That count comes from the Flora of Nebraska, which keeps Solidago altissimum as a variety of Canada goldenrod, not a separate species. Those 10 species, though, do include stiff goldenrod, even though botanists have changed its genus from Solidago to Oligoneuron. Ah, taxonomy. More rules.

The point is, there are a lot of goldenrod-ish plants in our prairies, all of which are really pretty. I don’t know that I have a favorite, but it’s really hard to resist the charms of soft, or velvet goldenrod (Solidago mollis). It’s a terrific mixed grass prairie plant – tough, stocky (staulky?), and able to withstand the dynamic and sometimes harsh conditions of central Nebraska grasslands. There are some big patches of the plant at our family prairie, as well as up in the Sandhills prairie at the Niobrara Valley Preserve, so I’ve seen it a lot lately.

If you look closely at goldenrod flowers this time of year, you’ll see a lot of insect visitors, including bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. You’ll also see a fair number of beetles, including a lot of goldenrod soldier beetles. The one I notice most, though, is the black blister beetle (Epicauta pensylvanica), And, no, there’s not a double N in pensylvanica. Don’t blame me – I’m not in charge of words or rules about words.

A black blister beetle on velvet goldenrod (*Solidago mollis*). Helzer family prairie.

Blister beetles can excrete a yellow substance that does indeed cause blisters, but I’ve never had that happen to me. I’ve let some crawl on my hands and have photographed a lot of them. I just don’t squeeze them or otherwise make them feel threatened.

The black blister beetle’s larvae start out very mobile after hatching and will find and feed on the eggs of grasshoppers. I haven’t found any reports that they hitchhike on adult grasshoppers to find those eggs, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they do. After all, their cousins the oil beetles hitchhike on bees to get to bee nests. Either way, it’s fun to see black blister beetles every year, and while they feed on lots of plants, I always associate them with late summer goldenrods.

Blister beetle on stiff goldenrod at the Helzer Family Prairie.

My last photo might be my favorite of the month so far, but it’s also one of the most recent, which exposes a big bias of mine. I saw a lot of katydids at Gjerloff Prairie yesterday morning before I had to run back to town to give a presentation to a college class (virtually). This one was one of the last I saw and I spent quite a bit of time photographing it. The sun had finally started to break through some horizon-hugging clouds and was making the dew drops all around me sparkle. I tried a lot of camera angles before I finally got what I wanted – partial sky blurred in the background, along with some sparkly drops to help frame the image.

A katydid warming up on a dewy, sparkly morning at Gjerloff Prairie.

I also spotted the first migratory (I assume) variegated meadowhawk dragonfly of the fall yesterday morning, roosting in the tall grass at Gjerloff. That’s usually my best signal for the change of seasons. I didn’t get a chance to photograph that particular dragonfly because I came across it well before it was light enough for a good photo. That’s ok, it still counts as my autumn indicator (along with the fact I had to wear layers to stay warm during my pre-sunrise walk), so happy autumn everyone!

It has finally gotten cold enough for my favorite winter wetland to freeze over. Mostly.

I made two quick trips this week to the restored wetland at the Platte River Prairies. It’s a former sand and gravel mining site and we converted it from a sandpit lake to a stream with side channel and backwater habitats about 15 years ago. It’s one of my favorite places to visit, especially in the winter, when I can slide around on the ice looking for frost and ice patterns – and, of course, ice bubbles. The ice conditions haven’t been ideal for ice bubbles so far this year, but the frost has been very nice.

During my first trip, the ice was thick enough to support my weight across most of the wetland. Unfortunately, the exceptions were along the banks, making it difficult to make my way from shore onto the ice. Jumping over the thin ice and hoping the thicker ice would hold me didn’t seem like a smart move. Instead, I just patrolled the banks until I found a spot where the ice had frozen all the way to the edge of the water. Once on the ice, I spent more time army crawling than walking to help ensure I didn’t accidentally take a very cold bath.

The depth of the water was less than a foot, so the greatest risk was a very cold walk back to the truck, and maybe some wet camera gear, but still. By the second time I visited, the ice was thicker, but I still had to move carefully and backtrack when I heard cracking sounds. Who needs caffeine when you have cracking ice sounds to keep you alert?

The skies were clear when the sun first came up on my first trip, but some diffuse clouds moved in as the sun rose. That couldn’t have worked out much better – the early sun was soft and warm and then as the light intensity increased with the sun’s height, clouds helped soften it again. There were a few snipe hanging around patches of open water and schools of small fish in pools near beaver dams. A mouse scurried across my patch once, too. Otherwise, I seemed to have the quiet, cold wetland to myself.

A beaver dam on the stream as it enters the restored wetland area.

Beavers have found this wetland attractive since we finished the restoration work. We actually designed the wetland with beavers in mind, knowing that both they and floods would continue to mold the initial template we created. Because of that, I didn’t spend a lot of time on the finer details of topographic shaping. Instead, I made sure we created lots of potential paths for the stream entering the site to make its way through the restoration area, depending upon what beavers and flooding chose to do. As a result, the configuration of water and land changes quite a bit from year to year.

A little “frost tree”, made of frost accumulating on a little plant stem protruding from the ice.

Another of the many beaver dams on the property.

While the beavers are busily impounding water at the site, I also imagine they wished we hadn’t created quite so many potential paths for that water to flow. It takes a lot of dams to hold water back, and even then, there always seem to be little streams that find their way around those structures. If I was a beaver, that would feel pretty frustrating, I think. As an ecologist, though, I think that habitat variety is great!

A trickle of water circumventing a beaver dam (sorry, guys!).

Another look at the same little stream of water.

Cattail seeds on the ice. These any other invasive plants continually float into the wetland from upstream, making it a big challenge to maintain decent plant diversity in the restoration area.

Much of my time on the ice, during both my morning visits, was spent photographing frost accumulated on plants near the surface of the ice. I’ve had days with much more frost than I saw this week, but after many months of no frost at all, I was perfectly happy. Winter is a tough time to find wildflowers and insects to photograph, so frost (and ice bubbles – coming soon, I hope!) help keep me entertained.

I recognize that not everyone enjoys getting up early on frigid days to go slide around the ice looking for interesting frost accumulations to photograph. My family members, for example, have never shown any interest in joining me. That’s fine. Too many people on the ice would probably be a bad idea anyway.

However, if you’re looking for a way to get some fresh air this winter and you live in a place with frozen wetlands, I do recommend them as a place to explore. There’s always something interesting to see if you look closely. Just keep your weight spread out and be kind to the beavers.

The Prairie Ecologist

Essays, photos, and discussion about prairie ecology, restoration, and management

Tag Archives: macro

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