Tag Archives: nebraska

Pussytoes and Early Season Pollinators

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I drove out to our family prairie yesterday to look for some early spring activity.  I scared up a couple of turkeys and a big owl, watched a red-tailed hawk soar for a while, and listened to the western meadowlarks tuning up for the breeding season.  No snakes were to be found, but there were plenty of leopard frogs along the edge of the pond.  I’d hoped to see some wildflowers, but there weren’t many blooming yet.  Apart from abundant sun sedge (Carex heliophila) plants on the steeper slopes, the only blooms to be found were patches of pussytoes (Antennaria neglecta).  Not that there’s anything wrong with pussytoes!

Pussytoes (Antennaria neglecta) in the Helzer Prairie, south of Aurora, Nebraska

Our prairie sits right on the transition between tallgrass and mixed-grass prairie in Nebraska.  As such, it can be dominated by big bluestem and indiangrass, or by western wheatgrass, side-oats grama, tall dropseed, and other shorter grass species – depending upon recent weather and management.  Part of the property is unplowed prairie, but much of it was seeded in the early 1960’s by my grandpa soon after he bought the property.  The formerly cropped areas were seeded with grasses, but have also been colonized over time by many of the forb species from the hillier unplowed prairie on the site.

Pussytoes grows well in both the unplowed and seeded portions of the prairie.  It can be found in small patches consisting of a few individuals, but also in living room-sized populations.  The plant is considered to be allelopathic and reduces the height of surrounding plants, which makes large patches fairly easy to see.  It also seems to do well in the areas of the prairie favored by grazing cattle.  (Whether this is because the cattle are drawn to the shorter grass or because the pussytoes do well in heavily grazed areas I can’t tell – it’s likely both!)

Many of the pussytoes flowers were just starting to emerge, meaning that they were only an inch or so off the ground.

Regardless, the pussytoes had the wildflower blooming stage to themselves on this early April day.  I needed to scratch my itch for wildflower photography after a long winter, so I laid down with my tripod and focused in on a few plants.  As often happens when I take the time to sit down in a prairie, I noticed other things around me.  This time it was the buzzing of pollinators who had also noticed that pusseytoes were blooming.  As I watched, I counted at least 8 species of pollinating insects bouncing from flower to flower, looking for those with pollen-laden anthers.  Most of the insects were flies, but a few bees and a moth were among the visitors as well.  Elsewhere on the prairie I saw some orange sulphur butterflies too, but never actually saw one land on a pussytoes flower.

This was one of several fly species busily visiting pussytoes flowers.

Another fly species (about the size of a house fly).

A much smaller fly, wiping pollen off its leg with its mouthparts. (I assume - or wiping its mouthparts with its leg, who can tell?)

This was the only bee species I saw, though I thought I heard a bumblebee go by...

Since our prairie is a 106 island of prairie in a landscape consisting mostly of cropland, these pussytoes were not only the sole source of pollen in our prairie – they were just about the only thing to pollinators to eat for miles.  Not even the dandelions in the neighbor’s creek bottom had started to bloom yet.  I’d never thought of pussytoes as a critical plant for pollinators, but apparently I underestimated this low-stature plant.  I’m guessing it’s not the first time its been overlooked…

Yes, I know, this looks like the same fly species shown above, but I really like its face, and this photo shows it off better than the other one does...

First Prescribed Fire of the Season

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To be perfectly honest, this post is mainly to build my own morale.  Last week, we were finally able to squeeze off our first prescribed fire of the season.  Typically, we get several good windows of opportunity during the month of March, but this year it was late in the month before the combination of wind, temperature, and relative humidity all lined up – and even then it was a very short window.  We woke up to temperatures in the mid 20’s and a couple hours after we wrapped up the fire we had thunder/lightning and sleet.  However, between late morning and mid-afternoon, we had very nice conditions for a prescribed fire.  It looks like that will be the only fire we get done in March – we have snow on the ground again, and while temperatures are forecast to rise toward the weekend, the wind speeds are too, making it unlikely we’ll burn again until at least next week. 

Looking at these photos from our successful first fire helps distract me from the list of other fires we’re still waiting to complete during the next couple of weeks (not to mention the long list of later-spring fires that will follow!)

The cold overcast conditions of the morning gave way to mostly sunny skies by early afternoon, which warmed and dried the grass and helped it burn more completely. For this fire, our burn crew size was bolstered by the addition of several staff from the nearby U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Refuges office.

Our objective for the fire was to remove the thatch/litter from approximately 1/3 of the 175 acre prairie as part of our patch-burn grazing management. Beginning in early April, this site will be grazed by cattle, at a light/moderate stocking rate. Those cattle should graze the burned patch fairly intensively, while leaving the unburned patches largely ungrazed.

 

As the fire unit was finally ringed, a big plume of smoke rose into the air. Because our Platte River Prairies are near Interstate 80, we have to be very cautious about keeping smoke away from highway traffic. On this day, we had two things in our favor - the excellent lifting of the smoke (because of heat of the fire and the unstable atmosphere) and the east winds, which kept the smoke off of the Interstate to our north.

As the fire consumed the remaining grass inside the unit, our crew extinguished the last flames along the edges. We then began the long process of mopping up, which in a grazed prairie primarily means raking smoking piles of dried manure away from the edges of the fire unit. As we mopped up, we watched the half a dozen Swainson's hawks which, attracted by the smoke, had come to feed on the voles and other small mammals that were too slow to find new cover as they escaped from the fire.