Tag Archives: nature photography

Photo of the Week – March 10, 2011

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It’s fire season!  Or, at least, it’s the season that many of us start conducting prescribed fires in prairies.  For various reasons, March and April tend to be the months during which the vast majority of prescribed fires take place.  Here in Nebraska, we missed the last big snowstorm that came through, so if the current weather forecasts hold, we hope to start sending smoke into the air next week.

Our technician Matt is enjoying the opportunity to light things on fire. ...sure he is - he's not in charge! I still enjoy prescribed fire season, and feel a sense of accomplishment when we finish one, but it was a lot more fun when I wasn't the burn boss.

Before each spring fire season starts, we get together with local partners and hold a refresher course to go over safety procedures and generally remind ourselves that prescribed fire is a complicated and dangerous undertaking.  One of the most useful – and goofy – parts of that refresher course is the sand table exercise, where grown-up biologists from multiple agencies and organizations play make-believe in sandboxes.  We lay out hypothetical prescribed fire situations, complete with roads, houses, people, equipment, and hazards, and then run through various scenarios to give everyone a chance to think about how they’d respond in real life.  Once you get over the initial silliness of the idea, it’s actually very useful.

Staff from the Nature Conservancy and partner organizations and agencies participate in a sand table exercise to simulate prescribed fire scenarios.

Because prescribed fire is not something to take lightly, it’s important to make sure the objectives are being met when a fire is conducted.  The success of a fire shouldn’t be measured by the percentage of a grassland that turns black, but by whether or not objectives for habitat manipulation, plant community impacts, etc. are met.  Remember that prescribed fires can be conducted during any season of the year, and that it can be good to shake up the timing – and other aspects – of your fires to ensure that you don’t always favor the same species (at the expense of others).  See an earlier post on this subject here.

Above all – be safe out there!

Photo of the Week – March 3, 2011

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 Katydids are a diverse group of species – about 243 different species reside in the U.S. and Canada.  We have about the same number of katydid species as we do grasshopper species in our Platte River Prairies, but grasshoppers tend to grab a lot more attention.  In fact, katydids are often called “long-horned grasshoppers”, though they’re actually much more closely related to crickets than grasshoppers.  Katydids are often difficult to see because of their camouflaged appearance, but it’s impossible not to hear the distinctive songs they make by rubbing their front legs together – especially in late summer. 

Katydid on false sunflower. Sarpy County, Nebraska.

In the above photo, you can see the tympana on the katydid’s front leg – right below its “elbow”.  The tympana is the hearing organ katydids and crickets use to hear the songs of others of their kind.

Telling grasshoppers and katydids apart is usually as easy as looking at the antennae (see below).  Grasshoppers have short antennae – much less than the length of their bodies.  Katydids have very long antennae that usually exceed their body length.

A grasshopper showing off its short antennae.

A katydid nymph (hence the short wings) with its long antennae - long enough I didn't capture their entire length in the photo.