Tag Archives: nature

Photos of the Week – April 8, 2025

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Across much of the Midwest and Great Plains of North America, the blooming of eastern pasqueflower is a pleasing indicator that a new growing season has begun. For photographers like me, it also helps break a long fast from showy wildflowers that typically runs from late October through early April each year.

Pasqueflower at The Nature Conservancy’s Niobrara Valley Preserve this week.

Pasqueflower isn’t always the first plant to bloom in a prairie, but it’s right there, and there aren’t many other early spring blossoms with more curb appeal. Actually, saying “it’s right there” is misleading because pasqueflower is not actually present in most of Nebraska’s prairies. Its range extends across the state (or the northern 2/3 of the state, at least) but it’s found very sporadically within that range.

Most of the prairies I know best don’t have pasqueflower, but there’s a really nice population at the Niobrara Valley Preserve. Since first discovering it there nine or ten years ago, I’ve tried hard to find an excuse to travel to NVP each April and then find another excuse to climb the ridge to check on the flowers. This year, the excuse was that the Hubbard Fellows and I were asked to drive up to NVP to help with some prescribed fires. I was happy to oblige!

Because it’s one of the first blossoms available, pasqueflower attracts a lot of invertebrates looking for a meal. A rich diversity of flies visit pasqueflowers at the Niobrara Valley Preserve, along with some of the earliest of the native bees. This year, I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to photograph those little pollinators, but I did manage to capture a shot of one tiny fly before it flew off.

A tiny fly on the tip of a pasqueflower petal.

Flies and bees are great, but the pasqueflower-related insect I really look forward to each year is the oil beetle (Meloe sp.). The very first time I photographed pasqueflower at the Niobrara Valley Preserve, I spotted some of these big bulbous beetles crawling around. I was immediately intrigued, and later found out what they were. That led to some investigation into what was known about their lives and that led to one of my favorite insect ecology stories ever.

As a result, I was excited when Noelle (one of our two Hubbard Fellows this year) found a little cluster of oil beetles when we visited the pasqueflowers this week. I’d told the Fellows about the little creatures as we got close to the flower patch and had asked them to keep an eye out for them. I then proceeded to walk right past the group of beetles Noelle spotted after immediately after I passed them. So much for my reputation as someone with a good eye for finding small creatures.

Oil beetle feeding on pasqueflower petals.

I’ve posted pasqueflower and/or oil beetle photos quite a few times on this blog now. In fact, probably six times, since that’s the number of times I’ve had a successful trip to NVP during the pasqueflower blooming season since I first discovered them. I don’t always find oil beetles on the flowers, but I find them more often than I don’t. It’s also the only time and place I’ve ever seen oil beetles.

Each year, I think I say the same thing, which is that I’ve found no evidence that oil beetles focus particularly on pasqueflowers as a food source, at least relative to other options. So why don’t I see them elsewhere? Despite this year’s failure, I really am pretty good at spotting insects, and oil beetles are pretty large and obvious. It’s odd that I’ve never seen oil beetles in other prairies or on other plant species.

2025 Hubbard Fellows Noelle Schumann (left) and Kojo Baidoo (right) enjoying the show.

The fellows and I enjoyed some quality time with the flowers and beetles on Tuesday morning, before heading back south toward home. Much of that time was spent with heads close to flowers, watching the slow, methodical munching of petals. It was peacefully mesmerizing.

In fact, here’s a short video to show you what I mean. (If the video doesn’t work for you, click on the title of this post to open it online and make the link active.)

If you’re tired of seeing pasqueflower and oil beetle photos here each spring, I guess I apologize for putting you through that particular trauma. On the other hand, no one is forcing you to be here.

For those of you who haven’t left, here are two more!

Oil beetles working to ensure there will be a new generation for me to enjoy next year.
Look at the amazing little crook in the antennae of this male.

I’d love to hear if other people see oil beetles on pasqueflower as predictably as I do. I think I’ve only heard from one other person who has seen that. I’ve found no references to an oil beetle/pasqueflower interaction online, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Help!

If you live near a pasqueflower population, I hope you get a chance to see them this spring. Even without the oil beetles, they’re sure a great way to kick off the spring.

Are Prairies Less Natural Because They Need Us?

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What if I told you tallgrass prairie is a human construct?

Would you think it’s less important?  Less natural?  Less real?

I don’t know if “human construct” is a totally fair description, but it’s certainly true that tallgrass prairie in the central United States exists because of people.  In many places, it formed because of people, and throughout its range, it relies on human stewardship for its continued persistence.

Let’s step back in time a little. 

While the actual timing of human arrival in North America is still being debated, there is consensus that people were here well before the ice sheets receded from the center of the continent (between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago).  Those humans played pivotal roles in the ecosystems they lived in. They hunted, cultivated and transported plants, and, perhaps most influentially, actively used fire in many different ways. 

As the continent warmed and bloomed after the ice age, human stewardship shaped plant and animal communities. In particular, people burned the landscape around them enough to create grasslands in what otherwise would surely have been wooded landscapes.  That was particularly important in the eastern portions of the tallgrass prairie.  Lightning fires were part of that story, too, but they were much less significant than the frequent, intentional use of fire by people.

In other words, if it hadn’t been for people and their stewardship of the land, tallgrass prairies would not have existed across much of what is now the Midwestern United States.  Throughout subsequent millennia, people have continued their stewardship, allowing prairies to persist in places where trees would otherwise have moved in.

Chelsea Forehead ignites a prairie that will help keep woody plants from taking over this prairie landscape.

Today, the majority of tallgrass prairie has been lost, of course – mostly through conversion to row crops.  The prairie that remains still relies on continuous, thoughtful stewardship by people.  Without active management with prescribed fire, haying, grazing, and/or targeted invasive species suppression, tallgrass prairie transitions to something else – shrubland, woodland, or a low-diversity herbaceous community that no longer qualifies as “prairie”.

Does that reliance on people make tallgrass prairies unnatural?  Does it mean we should “let nature take its course” and allow tallgrass prairie to become what it’s supposed to become? 

You’re welcome to form your own opinion, of course, but I feel strongly that the answer to both questions is no.  Most ecosystems on earth are strongly tied to human stewardship and have been for tens of thousands of years.  It’s not that those ecosystems or the species that depend upon them would all be destroyed in the absence of people, but they’d change dramatically – and many species would suffer as a result. We humans have certainly not always done the best job at land management but that doesn’t mean we can or should abdicate our responsibility as stewards.

Speaking more locally, prairie is amazing, beautiful, and complex.  The incredible, diverse ecological communities that live in tallgrass prairie rely upon our continued attention and stewardship. Losing those would be an immense tragedy.

This photo captures the essence of prairie. The more you look, the more you see.

Tallgrass prairie isn’t less important, natural, or real because it relies upon humans.  Instead, our long-standing, interconnected, and interdependent relationship with the prairie should increase its relevance and value to us. 

Just as with any other worthwhile relationship, though, we can’t just ignore the prairie and hope for the best.  Only thoughtful, adaptable care will ensure we can keep this good thing going for a very long time.

Additional Reading. If you want to learn more about the long relationship between humans and nature (prairies and otherwise), here are a few recent journal articles you might enjoy. They’ll get you started and provide many other references you can dig into if you want to keep going:

Impacts of indigenous burning in the Great Plains

Presence of people after the North American ice sheets receded

The shaping of global ecosystems by people for more than 12,000 years