niobrara | The Prairie Ecologist

Reminder: please join us this Saturday for the Platte River Prairies field day. RSVP by contacting Kate at kate.samuelson@tnc.org.

Kim and I both went up to the Niobrara Valley Preserve last week to help with that site’s annual butterfly count. Neil Dankert leads this count every year, as he has for most of the last 38 or so years. Check out his terrific website on Nebraska moths and butterflies here.

While I was at NVP, I found some time to do some photography. Looking back, it’s weird that I didn’t get a single photo of a butterfly, though I did photograph one moth.

Hairy golden aster and lead plant in Sandhills Prairie near the Niobrara River.

The butterfly count was on Friday but Kim and I stayed for an extra night so she could go for a run on Saturday morning and I could wander out with my camera. One of the first things I found on my sunrise walk was a couple clusters of male scoliid wasps. Female scoliid wasps feed on scarab beetle larvae, which live underground. Somehow, the wasps figure out where a larva is, dig down to it, and lay an egg on the hapless grub. The wasp larva then hatches out and eats the beetle larva before pupating and emerging from the ground as an adult wasp.

A male Scoliid wasp on its overnight roost with milkweed pollinia stuck to one foot.

The males don’t do any of that. They spend their time feeding on nectar and looking for females to mate with. Often, they do this with a bunch of other males. At night, they often congregate together to roost, either for safety in numbers, warmth, or some other reason we dont understand. I think the wasps I found are Scolia nobilitata but I’m not promising that’s true.

If you look closely at the wasp photo above, you can see the gummy candy-like pollinia of a milkweed plant stuck to its foot. Both adult male and female wasps of most (all?) species feed on nectar rather than other invertebrates (they eat invertebrates as larvae but not as adults) and end up as important pollinators of many flowers, including those of milkweeds. If you don’t know the incredible story of how milkweed is pollinated, you can read about it here.

This is a side view of the wasp shown ahead. You can see the pollinia in this photo, too (right side of the stick it is perched on).

Here’s a photo of part of the larger congregation of male wasps.

Prickly poppy (Argemone polyanthemos) was blooming during our trip, including a few plants right in front of the preserve office. On Friday, we had to wait for the vegetation to dry out before starting our butterfly count, so I took a few minutes to photograph the flowers and some pollinating visitors.

Metallic green sweat bee on feeding on pollen.

A cool-looking beetle, also apparently feeding on pollen.

Sand milkweed (*Asclepias arenaria*) flowers.

Lead plant was also in flower, and many different invertebrates were hanging out on the plants, including pollinators, herbivores, and predators.

A beetle feeding on the pollen and anthers.

Another moth, captured by a crab spider.

A flower longhorn beetle feeding on lead plant

Flower longhorn beetles of several (I think?) species were abundant last weekend, feeding on the blossoms of multiple wildflowers. I’ve only included a few of the many photos I took of them.

Flower longhorn beetle on upright prairie coneflower (*Ratibida columnifera*)

A flower longhorn beetle on bush morning glory

Bush morning glory (*Ipomaea leptophylla*)

Purple coneflower (*Echinacea angustifolia*)

The Niobrara Valley Preserve is near the eastern extent of ponderosa pine in Nebraska

Grasshopper exoskeleton (left after molting) on yucca leaves

Ants tending aphids (feeding on honeydew they exude) on fourpoint evening primrose

Hairy golden aster (Heterotheca villosa) and lead plant (Amorpha canescens)

In case you’re wondering, it was a mediocre day for butterflies. It feels like butterfly abundance has been relatively low on the prairies I’m familiar with this year. I’m not sure if that’s related to weather (I assume so?) and if it is, I don’t know what weather factor(s) are most relevant. It was an extremely warm, dry winter and spring and has been a wet summer. Both resident and migrant butterfly numbers seem low this year. Is this the case elsewhere this year?

Still, six of us found 28 butterfly species, including a number of at-risk species. Some of those included two-spotted skipper, regal fritillary, monarch, eyed brown, long dash, northern broken dash, little glassywing, dun skipper and coral hairstreak. Some years, we see large numbers of butterflies like orange sulphurs, common wood nymphs, and/or great spangled fritillaries, but not this year. We also didn’t find an ottoe skipper, which we’d hoped to see because the most recent Nebraska sighting was at NVP several years ago. Maybe next year…

I spent a couple days at the Niobrara Valley Preserve this week. I’ll be back again next week for our plant identification/habitat workshop on Tuesday May 19 (9am-2:30pm). If you’re interested in joining us for that (it’s free!), it’s not too late to sign up. Just email Kate (kate.samuelson@tnc.org) to RSVP. There might even be some housing available on the preserve if you act fast!

The prairie is just waking up in the Sandhills. The dry spring hasn’t helped much, but things are starting to bloom here and there. This week’s warm temperatures are speeding up growth and the weekend shows at least some chances of rain, which would really help. Still, there was plenty to see, even if we had to search a little to find flowers.

Hairy puccoon (*Lithospermum carolinense*)

Great Plains bladder-pod (*Physaria ludoviciana*)

Some of the early prairie sedges were already done blooming. These are some of the most abundant plants in the mixed-grass prairie, but often overlooked. They’re easiest to see and identify when they have flowers or, better yet, seed heads.

Insect galls on prairie wild rose (*Rosa arkansana*)

Sandhills prairie all the way to the horizon in the east bison pasture (10,000 acres)

Sandhills prairie with the river bluffs in the background

As the sun was setting Monday night, I climbed a hill to watch the sun and clouds over the river. I was not disappointed. I found a western wallflower in bloom and was able to frame it in front of both the sun and the river by lying down and putting my camera right on the ground. (I wonder what percentage of my life I’ve spent lying on the ground in a prairie? Not enough, I’d argue, but surely much more than most people.)

Many shrub species are in full bloom at the Preserve right now, including chokecherry and currant, and skunkbush sumac is about ready to open.

Chokecherry blossoms (*Prunus virginiana*)

Tuesday morning started with a nice and peaceful a sunrise as one could hope for. Once that sun got up, the wind started showing off a little, which was a little less pleasant, but it’s hard to complain too much when you’re exploring a place like this.

The Niobrara Valley Preserve headquarters

It’ll be fun to see how much changes between this week and next. We’re getting to the time of year where there are new flowers blooming each day, new birds migrating in, new bees emerging from the ground, etc. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll take my camera with me next week, too…

The Prairie Ecologist

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

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