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A Weekend Walk in the Woods
We visited family in eastern Nebraska this weekend. My in-laws have an oak woodland that I’ve become familiar with over the years, and I was glad to have a little time to wander through it. Because...
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Photo of the Week – April 18, 2013
I love that my kids enjoy nature. My two sons, in particular, are really enthusiastic about insects and spiders at the moment. So enthusiastic, in fact, that every spider in our house gets picked up...
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Tuning Into Fire Frequency
HOW OFTEN SHOULD PRAIRIES BE BURNED? It’s a question prairie ecologists and managers have been wrestling with for many years. Unfortunately, research on the impacts of fire management is somewhat...
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A Dandy Little Predator
I took my boys to our family’s prairie today. I was only intending to stay for a little while, but they were having so much fun building forts in the trees and drawing pictures in the mud, we stayed...
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Keeping a Low Profile in the Spring
At times, prairies in east-central Nebraska can have such an abundance of large wildflowers, they resemble flower gardens. Early spring is not one of those times. There are plenty of prairie flowers...
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Join Us For The Platte River Prairies Field Day: July 12, 2013
Come spend a day on the Platte River Prairies! Our annual open house/field day, just south of Wood River, Nebraska, will provide opportunities to hike the prairies with a variety of grassland...
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Blowing Against the Wind?
As I mentioned last week, I recently spent a couple days helping our land manager, Nelson Winkel, pull garlic mustard at our Rulo Bluffs Preserve in southeast Nebraska. The invasive species has just...
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Ragwort – Prettier (and More Valuable) than its Name Might Suggest
One of my favorite spring flowers is prairie ragwort (Senecio plattensis, aka Packera plattensis). Its bright yellow flowers add welcome color to prairies every May, especially when it appears in high...
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Difficult Decisions – Growing Season Fires and Other Prairie Management Choices
Would you purposefully destroy the nest of a wild turkey or grasshopper sparrow? Of course not. But what if that destruction was a consequence of a land management action that benefits the larger...
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Photo of the Week – June 27, 2013
The wind finally let up enough to do some close-up photography last weekend, so I went to a small prairie here in town and wandered a bit. Among numerous curiosities was the abundance of a tiny...
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Watching the Sandhills Bounce Back at the Niobrara Valley Preserve
I took our Hubbard Fellows up to the Niobrara Valley Preserve in north-central Nebraska last week. While we were there, I spent quite a bit of time in the east bison pasture, where the recovery of...
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Photo of the Week – July 3, 2013
Sometimes danger is waiting just around the corner… An ant explores an annual sunflower for extra-floral nectar, seemingly unware of the crab spider lurking on the other side of the petals. The Nature...
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Photo of the Week – July 11, 2013
Every visit to a prairie is different – partially because the prairie is always changing, and partially because I focus on different aspects or species each time. This week, I was near Griffith...
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What’s Bugging Milkweed?
As I walked a small prairie here in Aurora, Nebraska a few weeks ago, several species of milkweed were flowering abundantly, including butterfly milkweed (Ascelepias tuberosa), showy milkweed...
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Report from the 2013 Grassland Restoration Network Workshop – Part 1
The Grassland Restoration Network’s annual workshop took place a couple weeks ago in Columbia, Missouri. This year’s workshop was hosted by the Missouri Department of Conservation and included more...
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Photo of the Week – August 1, 2013
I first noticed the dead ants about a year ago, when James Trager was visiting our Platte River Prairies to help us see our grassland through the eyes of ants. As we poked around the prairie together...
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It’s Bee Week!
Thanks to a return visit by Mike Arduser of the Missouri Department of Conservation, it’s bee week in the Platte River Prairies. Mike came out to our sites a year ago to help us start thinking about...
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Photo of the Week – August 8, 2013
A little more than a week ago, I took a walk through one of the restored wetlands here in the Platte River Prairies, enjoying the abundance of wildflowers and other life. Here are a few photos from...
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Why There Is No Cookbook for Restoring and Managing Prairies
From Anne Stine, Hubbard Fellow: My big goal for this fellowship is to learn how to make a prairie from scratch. I also want to know enough about prairie restoration/management that I can evaluate a...
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The Softer Side of Wasps
A couple weeks ago, I posted a photo of a wasp (along with some other shots from a walk through one of our wetlands) and mentioned that I’d have a story about that wasp in an upcoming post. Here you...
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