prairie | The Prairie Ecologist

I’ve been very lucky so far this month to have a lot of time to wander through prairies with my camera, both during and outside of work hours. Here is a selection of images from the first 10 days of September.

Dotted gayfeather and annual buckwheat at the Niobrara Valley Preserve.

The Niobrara Valley Preserve continues to be accented by huge patches of annual buckwheat (Eriogonum annuum). Last week, I stopped briefly to admire some dotted gayfeather plants, which contrasted beautifully with the buckwheat. While I was lying down with the gayfeather (being very careful not to lie on top of any cacti) a bumble bee stopped by to visit the flowers, which was a pleasant surprise.

Plains sunflower against a backdrop of buckwheat and camphorweed.

Not long after I photographed the gayfeather, I came across an old bison bull hanging out by himself. The rut has ended, so he might have just been resting after a month of chasing cows and fighting off other bulls. My guess, though, is that he was an older bull who skipped all that excitement and has been hanging out by himself all summer. As I watched the bull, I also watched the thunderstorm building behind him and moving off to the east. As always, I photographed the bison from the safety of my vehicle.

A bison stands in front of a building storm.

Later that night, I was about to crawl into my tent (we were hosting a workshop and housing was scarce – plus it was a beautiful night for camping) when I noticed lightning in the distance. The storm that had built behind the bison was still in sight as it moved eastward. I walked the short distance between my tent and the Niobrara River and photographed the storm, the stars, and the river for a while.

A receding thunderstorm over the Niobrara River after dark.

Our new backyard prairie garden is finally starting to come into its own and it’s been fun to see what animals have been drawn in. Yesterday, I saw both a cricket frog and leopard frog, which was surprising, given the distance between us and any water bodies or streams. I didn’t photograph either of them because the lighting was bad, but I did capture a fun portrait of a gorgeous wasp visiting some wild bergamot.

A *Prionyx* wasp on wild bergamot in our backyard.

Lincoln Creek Prairie, my local go-to spot for quick in-town photography jaunts, is getting tall and harder to walk through. Tall prairie plants, though, are fun to silhouette against early and late sunlight.

Maximilian sunflower at Lincoln Creek Prairie.

Garden spiders continue to be abundant and visually apparent at a lot of the prairies I’m visiting right now. I picked one up the other day, just to show someone that they’re harmless. It ran around on my hands but clearly wasn’t happy about it so I let it go back to its web. I say they’re harmless… I mean they’re harmless to us, of course, not to the many smaller invertebrates whose lives end shortly after they encounter the big webs.

I was leaving one of our Platte River Prairies sites the other day, having finished up some data collection, when I saw a garden spider web with thistle seeds stuck to it. The seeds framed the spider itself really nicely and I couldn’t resist stopping to try some photography. Without going into needless details, having to do with topography, vegetation, lens selection, apertures, etc., I couldn’t figure out an angle and composition that matched what I had envisioned in my head. I did eventually get a shot that at least showed what was going on. It’s fine.

Thistle seeds caught in a garden spider web.

Speaking of thistles, a lot of native thistles are producing seeds right now, which is making a lot of birds very happy. Some of the thistles (especially tall thistle – Cirsium altissimum) are still blooming, which is making a lot of monarchs, bumble bees, and other pollinators very happy. I’m always a sucker for floating seeds, both before and after they launch.

Seeds of tall thistle (native wildflower).

I also like playing around with different lighting angles when a photo subject gives me the time for that. The thistle seed above wasn’t going anywhere, so I shot it from multiple directions. The tiny moth below was too cold and wet to complain about my lying down on multiple sides of it, trying out various angles and compositions.

I’m still hearing cicadas in both the prairie and our yard, but I think they’re starting to wane. Grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids, though, are still going strong, making the late summer prairies nice and noisy. The high-pitched whines and buzzes of those insects is sometimes punctured by the machine gun song of sedge wrens, too. Sometimes I like to enjoy an audiobook as I wander the prairie, but it can be hard to focus on the plot when the prairie music is so loud. That’s not a complaint, by the way, just an observation.

Plains dog day cicada – Lincoln Creek Prairie.

I’m seeing a lot of praying mantises right now. I’ve photographed all three of our biggest species over the last month or so. This last week, I found both the native Carolina mantis and the non-native European mantis in situations where they were willing to pose for photos. I’ve seen some Chinese mantises as well, but not recently during times of good light or when I’ve had time to stop and visit.

Carolina mantis at Lincoln Creek Prairie.

Carolina mantis hanging out on a milkweed plant.

Jumping spiders are always adorable, but when they’re hiding in their little silken shelters high up in the vegetation, they’re gosh darned irresistible. Why is irresistible spelled with “ible” at the end instead of “able”? If we’re not able to resist something, shouldn’t it be “able”? Language is so confusing. Don’t bother commenting on this, by the way. I know there are rules for when to use each suffix. I just can’t be bothered to care about those rules.

Anyway, it’s usually hard to photograph spiders in their shelters because they’re hiding. Which is the point, of course. I was able to gently encourage this one to come out and say hello, briefly. I took a couple quick photos before it crawled back into hiding and I left it alone.

An exposed bird dropping moth on Maximilian sunflower. I love its tiny “unicorn horn” above its head.

Nebraska has 10 species of goldenrod, not counting two Euthamia species which are often called “grassleaf goldenrods”. That count comes from the Flora of Nebraska, which keeps Solidago altissimum as a variety of Canada goldenrod, not a separate species. Those 10 species, though, do include stiff goldenrod, even though botanists have changed its genus from Solidago to Oligoneuron. Ah, taxonomy. More rules.

The point is, there are a lot of goldenrod-ish plants in our prairies, all of which are really pretty. I don’t know that I have a favorite, but it’s really hard to resist the charms of soft, or velvet goldenrod (Solidago mollis). It’s a terrific mixed grass prairie plant – tough, stocky (staulky?), and able to withstand the dynamic and sometimes harsh conditions of central Nebraska grasslands. There are some big patches of the plant at our family prairie, as well as up in the Sandhills prairie at the Niobrara Valley Preserve, so I’ve seen it a lot lately.

If you look closely at goldenrod flowers this time of year, you’ll see a lot of insect visitors, including bees, butterflies, and other pollinators. You’ll also see a fair number of beetles, including a lot of goldenrod soldier beetles. The one I notice most, though, is the black blister beetle (Epicauta pensylvanica), And, no, there’s not a double N in pensylvanica. Don’t blame me – I’m not in charge of words or rules about words.

A black blister beetle on velvet goldenrod (*Solidago mollis*). Helzer family prairie.

Blister beetles can excrete a yellow substance that does indeed cause blisters, but I’ve never had that happen to me. I’ve let some crawl on my hands and have photographed a lot of them. I just don’t squeeze them or otherwise make them feel threatened.

The black blister beetle’s larvae start out very mobile after hatching and will find and feed on the eggs of grasshoppers. I haven’t found any reports that they hitchhike on adult grasshoppers to find those eggs, but I wouldn’t be shocked if they do. After all, their cousins the oil beetles hitchhike on bees to get to bee nests. Either way, it’s fun to see black blister beetles every year, and while they feed on lots of plants, I always associate them with late summer goldenrods.

Blister beetle on stiff goldenrod at the Helzer Family Prairie.

My last photo might be my favorite of the month so far, but it’s also one of the most recent, which exposes a big bias of mine. I saw a lot of katydids at Gjerloff Prairie yesterday morning before I had to run back to town to give a presentation to a college class (virtually). This one was one of the last I saw and I spent quite a bit of time photographing it. The sun had finally started to break through some horizon-hugging clouds and was making the dew drops all around me sparkle. I tried a lot of camera angles before I finally got what I wanted – partial sky blurred in the background, along with some sparkly drops to help frame the image.

A katydid warming up on a dewy, sparkly morning at Gjerloff Prairie.

I also spotted the first migratory (I assume) variegated meadowhawk dragonfly of the fall yesterday morning, roosting in the tall grass at Gjerloff. That’s usually my best signal for the change of seasons. I didn’t get a chance to photograph that particular dragonfly because I came across it well before it was light enough for a good photo. That’s ok, it still counts as my autumn indicator (along with the fact I had to wear layers to stay warm during my pre-sunrise walk), so happy autumn everyone!

Quick last minute announcement – we are hosting a plant identification/habitat workshop at the Platte River Prairies next Tuesday (9am-2pm). Fore more information or to RSVP, please contact Kate Samuelson at kate.samuelson@tnc.org.

I spent a couple days at the Niobrara Valley Preserve this week. There was a lot to see, as always. Here are some of the highlights.

A bison calf at the Niobrara Valley Preserve this week.

It’s mating season for the bison. During the rut, as it’s called, the herd is as noisy as it ever gets. The sound comes mainly from the big mature bulls who take mating very seriously and spend a lot of time “tending” females. That mostly entails finding females in heat and sticking very close to them, preventing them from merging with the larger herd and keeping other males from getting too close until (they hope) mating ensues. You can get a feel for the sounds of this happening in the video below. (If the video link isn’t active, click on the title of the post to open it online.)

We have two herds on the Preserve. The west herd has a 12,000 acre pasture and the east heard has a 10,000 acre pasture. Between the two, there are around 1,500 to 1,600 animals right now. I was hanging out with the east herd this week.

In that east bison pasture, the bison were very noticeable, of course, but the other big scene stealer was a plant. Annual buckwheat (Eriogonum annuum) is as abundant as I’ve ever seen it and I’m not sure why. It made a terrific white backdrop for photographing the bison herd, but also was attractive on its own – especially with some plains sunflowers (Helianthus petiolaris) mixed in for accents.

Young bison bull with buckwheat and sunflowers.

Most of this year’s bison calves are getting big and have lost their red color, making them blend into the herd much more than they did a couple months ago. That’s not uniformly true, though – there are a few red calves around that were probably born within the last month or so. It’s not unusual to have a few outliers like that, even though most calves are born in April and May.

But a few are considerably younger and more red.

This calf had some red color left but was definitely transitioning into more standard bison brown.

Brown-headed cowbird perched on a bison cow.

A big bull scanning the herd for potential mates and rivals.

The photo below shows a bull, cow, and calf in what you might think is a little family group. They’re not ‘that kind’ of family, though. What’s really happening is that the cow is in heat (ready to mate) and the bull has separated her from the herd a little so he can keep an eye on her and keep rival males from getting too close. The calf is trying to stay with her mom, too, both for food and comfort.

Monday evening, I drove slowly out to one of the bigger groups of animals in the east bison pasture and parked near where they were hanging out. Over the next hour, the herd very slowly flowed past my truck. I enjoyed watching all the social dynamics and listening to the sounds of the rut. I also took a few short videos with my phone (shown earlier and below) when the animals were right outside my window. I had a to cut a couple of them short, though, because my truck started swaying too much as a young bull scratched its neck and back on my rear bumper. The video below shows a bull licking its flank and the sound gives you an idea of the rasping power of a bison tongue.

All that bison and buckwheat action took place in Sandhills prairie on the south side of the river. On the north side, we have mixed-grass prairie on “harder ground” – sandy soils, but with a little more clay and silt mixed in.

A road cut on a hill north of the river shows the sandy loam soils underneath the mixed-grass prairie.

There’s a lot of overlap in plant species composition between the prairie to the north and south of the river, but also some significant differences. For example, purple, white, and silky prairie clovers are all blooming in the Sandhills right now. On the north, there are a few of each those species, too, but also some big populations of golden and nine-anther prairie clover, which aren’t so much Sandhills plants.

Nine-anther prairie clover (foreground) and mixed-grass prairie.

I poked around in the hills north of the river for a while on Sunday evening and then headed down to the river for sunset. I walked up to the Norden Chute, the big waterfall just upstream of the Norden Bridge that crosses the Niobrara River on our property. This local landmark is accessible to anyone who wants to park in the little lot by the bridge and walk under the bridge to get close. (There is also public fishing available in the same spot.) Because the Chute keeps moving upstream a few feet each year, you might want to come see it fairly soon because when it hits the wider channel, it’s hard to know what it will become.

Arrowhead (*Sagittaria* sp.) and sunset light

Please come visit both the Niobrara Valley Preserve and our Platte River Prairies! There are public trails at both sites. And, at both sites, in addition to some very nice interpretive materials at the trailheads, you should really take a look inside the bathrooms. They’re perfectly nice bathrooms, but they also include some murals painted by former Hubbard Fellow Noelle Schumann. Here are some photos from the trailhead bathrooms at the Niobrara Valley Preserve:

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Tag Archives: prairie

Photos of the Week – September 11, 2026

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