I made a quick run out to our family prairie this week to see how our grazing management was looking.  It was a beautiful evening for a stroll, as the sun went down through layers of diffuse clouds.  The abundant rain this year has fueled tremendous growth in the prairie and has filled up the wetland to its rim.  As planned, a portion of the prairie is short-cropped by cattle grazing while other areas are either ungrazed or lightly grazed, and there was a lot of life on display.

Grasshoppers and katydids exploded around my feet as I walked around – most of them clearly adults since they were flying short distances before landing again (they only get wings after their final molt into adulthood).  They were joined by hordes of other invertebrates, including caterpillars, bees, butterflies, and many others.  I flushed a great horned owl from a big ash tree, and then was very pleased to see a rail (probably a Virginia rail) dangle its feet as it flew across our recovering wetland.  Here are a few photos from the night.

I’ve seen this same species of caterpillar in a couple places this week.  This one was munching on false boneset.

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Dotted gayfeather and stiff goldenrod were both abundant uphill from the wetland.

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A close-up view of dotted gayfeather.

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Our wetland at sunset.  The addition of a couple solar-powered wells for livestock water has allowed us to exclude cattle from the pond/wetland area, and the habitat improvements are obvious.

A quick note of thanks:  This blog quietly passed two milestones this week.  I posted my 500th post, and we passed the 1,800 mark on blog subscribers.  Thank you for your continued support of this site – I hope it’s as useful and enjoyable to you as it is to me.