Photo of the Week – June 17, 2016

I’m just back from a great week in the Nebraska Sandhills.  I saw an amazing array of wildlife, invertebrates, plants and landscapes.  Of the many wildflowers in bloom this week, none punctuated the hills more beautifully than yucca (aka soapweed).  As always, nearly every yucca stem with actively blooming flowers hosted an abundance of yucca moths, the only pollinator of yucca plants.  If you aren’t familiar with the incredible relationship between yucca moths and yucca plants, you can read about it in a previous post.

Yucca moths in the early morning. Nebraska Sandhills - Cherry County.

Yucca moths in the early morning. Nebraska Sandhills – Cherry County.

I’ll post some more Sandhills photos next week…

Photo of the Week – January 15, 2016

I was looking through a couple batches of winter photos from recent years and found some images I’d never posted here.  Since my camera hasn’t left its bag in the last week or so, I’ll post a few of those old photos today.

So – I hereby present:

“Miscellaneous photos I didn’t previously feel were worthy of posting but are better than nothing.”

Or maybe, “I bet you’ve never seen THESE photos before!”

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Stiff sunflower (Helianthus pauciflorus) buried in snow. Aurora, Nebraska.

Frozen stream/wetland. The Nature Conservancy's Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

Frozen stream/wetland. The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

Sun and shadow contrast on snow drift.

Sun and shadow contrast on snow drift.