Discoveries after the Burn

It's been a good day - I've discovered a few things and, most importantly, learned something new.

I've been walking the burned area almost every day since we burned it, just open to whatever I might see. Here's what it looked like this morning....


You can see how quickly the grasses are coming up. It's only been 8 days since we burned and there was absolutely no green visible after the burn. You can also see last summer's path meandering through the burned area.

I mentioned a couple days ago that within a few days I was also able to see our paths from 2 summers ago, as well as the network of prairie vole trails. Here's a photo, taken while standing in the fire break, of last year's path (going off to the left from the firebreak) intercepted by the prior summer's path coming in from the right. If you look closely, you can see a fair number of prairie vole trails as well.


In the next photo, you can see a network of prairie vole trails and a mound that's greener than the surrounding area. That mound is the prairie vole colony itself. I believe that the mound is greener than the surrounding area because of extra nutrients brought up from the subsoil as the voles excavate their tunnels. Prairie vole "fertilization" in the area may play a role as well. Beyond the mound is another trace of our path from 2 summers ago.


As I walked our path a couple days ago, I found this prickly pear cactus immediately adjacent to the mowed area...yet I hadn't had a clue it was there until after the burn! That doesn't say good things about my observation skills, I guess, especially since I knew there was a prickly pear somewhere in the area - I'd seen it after our original burn.




Most interestingly, near two of the coyote digs I found wasp nest combs that can only be from yellowjacket colonies. The photo to the left shows a close-up of one of the charred combs; the one below shows the same comb in the bottom left corner and the colony it presumably was dug out of in the top right corner. So now I'm questioning whether the coyotes were digging for voles...or whether they were digging for yellowjacket nests. It's an interesting mystery to ponder (and do a bit of internet research on).



As I said, it's been an interesting and successful day already!

Four days after the burn. 1/10" rain on the evening of the second day.

Becker, Blue and I just got back from our morning walk. Now that some of the ash overlay has blown off or been watered in, I can see many more vole trails. I can even see our mowed paths from two years ago! It's almost a bit frightening how long and how easily the prairie remembers our influence....

I'm already seeing a few spikes of green grass pushing up. While it stirs my winter-tired, spring-hungry heart to see them, I'm trying to keep my joy within bounds - it's probably brome, a cool season, non-native grass, that I'm seeing!

The burn seems to have attracted two species of birds to it, in particular. I saw 5 or 6 flickers foraging, as well as several killdeer. Found a couple flicker breast feathers on the ground, too. I'm not sure what that was all about, as I saw no signs of a body nearby. Maybe a squabble over some particularly tasty tidbit two birds had found at the same time.

Mama bluebird had a beak-full of dried grasses, perched in the top of an osage orange, so they've found some sort of nesting site already. Which reminds me that I need to get the new nesting boxes up.

On a related note, as I walked through the draw with the boys, I saw both hawks sitting side by side in the big cottonwood in our neighbor's pasture. One is much spookier than the other and flew off almost as soon as I saw them, but the other stayed put through our entire walk. I think that may be the female, as it seems a little larger than the other one. I hope so. Any day now, I hope to see her sitting solidly in the nest, keeping eggs warm!

After the Burn is Over, After the Flames are Gone....

(You can sing the title to the tune of "After the Dance Is Over, After the Music's Done....")

Sunday, the day after we did the burn in the back 5 acres, I took The Boys for a walk and looked it over a little more closely. It's always fun to see what's revealed after a fire....


For the past week or so, there's been an elusive deer skull taunting the dogs as we walked out back. I first saw it in the neighbor's field when Becker and Blue just HAD to go over there to inspect it. There was a companion leg associated with it, which was almost more fascinating to the dogs than the skull. Perhaps that because the skull was covered with soil and looked like it had been partially buried. Both looked pretty "ripe", like they'd been aged quite thoroughly.

The next day when we walked, the skull and leg were magically in OUR field, about 50' from where they'd been lying the day before. There they stayed for 2 more days, then magically they moved again. This time the skull went south and the leg went east, instead of staying together. My dogs faithfully found them each time they moved. (I'm attributing this "magic movement" to coyotes, of course.) I don't mind if my local coyotes want to munch on decayed deer flesh, but I'm really not too keen on my dogs doing so; therefore, this daily deer skull hunt had really begun to get on my nerves.

After the burn, the deer skull stood out boldly. The leg was much less visible. I'm curious to see what happens to them now that they've been "purified" by fire, so I'm continuing to just let them be.


Another sight that I always look forward to seeing after a fire are the prairie vole colonies and their associated runways.


I don't know why these fascinate me so much - maybe because it reminds me of playing with Matchbox cars during childhood! The little roads run from vole town to vole town and I can just imagine the self important little beasts scurrying back and forth, visiting their neighbors, gossiping about the good vegetation finds they've made recently.

This winter I've noticed fairly large holes turning up occasionally in the back 5. A couple have been as big as 18" X 12" and up to 12" deep.


At first I thought that some animal must be beginning to dig itself a burrow, but they never got deepened after the first time I saw them. Finally I decided it was coyotes (again), digging out the prairie vole colonies for a late night snack.

Boy, do those scars show up boldly against the burn. (The cell phone in the hole is to give you a sense of scale.)


Greg wants to fill in the coyote digs because he (correctly) notes that they will be real ankle-turners otherwise. While I know he's right, there's the curious part of me that wants to watch them and see how they change over the upcoming months and years. What's going to grow on the mounds of soil thrown up? Will the holes fill back in by themselves? Will they become used by some other animal in some other way? (Maybe I'll leave just one or two...and flag them, so we don't injure ourselves....)

Do I get upset about all of these disruptions to my slowly thickening grasses and wildflowers? Heck, no. The prairie vole colonies bring water and air down into the soil...and probably a fair amount of vegetation and fertilizer too. Other animals, from insects to other mammals to snakes, will utilize the vole tunnels for shelter. The coyote digs provide a small area of open soil for seeds to colonize, where new plants can gain a foothold. It's all part of the natural prairie cycle, and I love seeing it play itself out in my big back yard.

Burn, Baby, Burn!

Maintaining or restoring a prairie requires burning it periodically. Prairies evolved with fire, and nothing refreshes and nourishes a prairie like the occasional burn.

That said, it's been 3 years since we burned the back 5 acres, so we knew that it would be a good thing to burn at least part of it this spring. The first time we burned it, we burned the entire thing, but this time we wanted to leave part of it unburned to make sure that we left some of the insect life undisturbed. Prairies are mosaics of habitat; burning different areas during different years helps increase the diversity of plant and animal life within any given acreage.

Last time we burned, we didn't get the burn accomplished until early April. Some of the early wildflowers were up and blooming by that time, so the burn set them back for the year. In general, the later you burn in the spring, the more you will encourage the (warm season) grasses at the expense of wildflowers. Conversely, the earlier you burn, the more you will encourage wildflower growth. This time, I wanted to give the wildflowers the best start that I could, so we decided to burn as early as possible. That turned out to be yesterday.

Watching the weather obsessively all week, Saturday morning looked very promising for several reasons. The winds were supposed to average about 6 mph all day, with a little increase to 9 mph around noon. (Around here, for safety reasons, the powers-that-be require you to burn when the winds are between 5 and 15 mph - a potentially difficult window to hit in the perennially windy prairies.) The skies were due to be clear...and Greg would be home to lead the burn crew.

I was also able to find several Master Gardener friends willing to help us out: Sid, Ron, and Linda. Sid has burned his family land many times; Ron and Linda were new to the process but excited to learn about it, as they are restoring tall grasses to their property as well.

Greg and I prepared ahead of time. Greg had mowed the firebreaks several weeks ago. Early yesterday morning, we placed buckets of water with burlap sacks and towels scattered around the burn site, plus took out the rakes and flat shovels that we had gathered. Sid brought a sprayer for water, which we filled up and took with us, along with a couple other sprayers of our own. I highly recommend the sprayers!


By the time we had all gathered at 9 a.m., had a little caffeine and sugar fix from coffee and donuts, and then walked out to the back 5, the wind was steadily blowing at 11 mph with occasional gusts to 13 mph. Although the wind was pushing the upper limits of safety, the direction was perfect for this plot of ground, so we went ahead and started the burn. The photo above is of the section we chose to burn, right before we set the initial (backburn) fire.

To keep the fire under control, we set the backfire and slowly expanded it. (A backfire, for those who aren't familiar with burning, is a fire set at the edge of the burn parcel which is farthest from the direction the wind is blowing out of. This means that the fire has to burn against the wind to move, keeping it much slower and smaller than if it were moving with the wind. As the backfire burns, it creates a wider and wider firebreak along that edge.) With the wind shifting between the north, northeast and full east, we were very careful to backburn a large area before beginning to set the faster, scarier head fires that travel with the wind.


It was a challenge. I was SO glad that we had all 5 of us working, as the gusts were enough to push the fire into the closely mowed windbreaks and we had to stop those creeping flames before they crossed over into non-target areas. Once we got the backburn accomplished, though, it became much easier and faster. The second photo, above, shows the backfire, moving slowly against the wind. If you look really closely, you can see Sid to the left of the right-hand redcedar, keeping an eye on that edge of the burn. Overall, the burn took about 2 1/2 hours - slow, but a good, clean burn that did not cross the mowed firebreaks to make us test our backup firebreaks (the wheat field to the west and the overgrazed pasture to the south).


Here are 4 of the 5 prairie fire folks: Linda, Ron, Sid and Greg. We were tired and sooty but satisfied, with the grassland burned safely and well.

We're due to get rain tonight, then temperatures are predicted to be up into the 70's by the end of the week. I'm looking forward to a rapidly greening grassland and the first real chance to see if any of the overseeding that I've been doing is producing increased plant diversity.

Thanks again to Sid, Ron and Linda!!!

Etch-a-Sketch in Snow

Sometimes it's hard to see grasses - even prairie grasses - as particularly important to wildlife. About 2 weeks ago, though, we got 9" of snow. I didn't get outside until a day or two later, but meanwhile the weather had stayed quite cold, preserving the telltale white blanket nicely.

I saw all kinds of tracks as I walked: coyote tracks, pheasant tracks, cat tracks, dog tracks, rabbit tracks. The photo above is of "tweety bird" tracks - sparrows? cardinals? goldfinch? - and it shows how carefully the bird(s) were hunting around the clumps of grass sticking up through the snow. If you look carefully, you can even see the wingprints of a bird as it was taking off, in the foreground, just left of center. The tracks create a record that even I, a rank novice at reading tracks, could understand. Sort of an Etch-a-Sketch in snow!

Exploring the Aftermath of the Storm

Pristine snow just doesn't seem to happen in our yard. Two German shepherds take that on as their special project.

After two days of short or nonexistent walks, Becker and Blue were raring to go this morning. So I bundled up - even digging out a wool scarf to try to protect my face a bit - and off we went. I plodded. Becker alertly trotted. Blue galloped and twirled and raced and tossed his muzzle in the snow and begged Becker to play and galloped and twirled some more.

I think Blue would have been happy to stay out there all day.

In the Cedar Grove, it was interesting to see how each tuft of grass had created its own snowdrift, leaving the field looking rather like a collection of sand dunes seen from the sky.

Shortly after we entered the Back 5, I started to noticed the arcs in the snow, inscribed by the grasses and other plants as the wind moved them ceaselessly back and forth. There were long, gentle arcs from the tall grasses; short, fine arcs from the short grasses; complex parallel arcs from forbs; and occasionally there were combinations of all of the above.

Seeds remaining on the sideoats grama and other short grasses stood out boldly against the white.

I flushed a meadowlark sheltering in a bunch of grass. It was cold enough that he waited until I was about 5' away before he lost his nerve. If I'd known he was there, I wouldn't have disturbed him. The dogs flushed two more as we walked, and all of them let us get much closer than they normally would have.

Along the far edge of the Back 5, the western most point of our property, the drifts were deep enough that I couldn't see our mowed path anymore. I shortcut through the unmowed grasses to avoid them, the snow coming up midcalf. The drifts were easily 2-3' deep. According to the gauge on our back deck, we only received 3" of snow, but those grasses managed to catch the snow blowing off the wheat field to our west. The farmer's loss is my land's gain.

A flock of snow geese flew overhead - the first I've seen this year.

And watching the 3rd meadowlark, after the dogs had flushed it from its resting place, I managed to give myself a brief case of snow blindness. I guess that's what you'd call it. For a while I saw orange streaks across my vision...that faded to peach...and eventually to yellow. Finally I didn't notice them at all. By then I was back inside the house, immensely thankful for modern technology and the gentle warmth of central heating.

Coming Under the Influence of "The Spell of the Sensuous"

I've been reading some thought-provoking books this fall, and none more so than the one I just finished, The Spell of the Sensuous by David Abram.

This book hypothesizes how "civilized" humans became so divorced from the living world around us that many people can't fathom how its health matters to them at all. I've learned some really interesting things while read it. For example, Plato was one of the first humans to use the phonetic alphabet to write down his (and Socrates') ideas. Why didn't Socrates write things down himself? He was probably illiterate. At that point in time, the phonetic alphabet was new technology. Literally. Like all of the most influential new technologies, it changed the way we humans lived, even thought. All of those discussions about what truth, beauty and goodness are? This was the first time in history that those abstract concepts could be looked at and studied without referencing the specific circumstances they occurred under; the first time that you could go back to what you said the day (or week or month or year) before and refresh yourself and others on EXACTLY what you had spoken about.

Divorcing the abstract concept from the specific circumstances changed how we judged our actions and behaviors in very fundamental ways.

Being able to recite (read) the same story, in exactly the same words, day after day after year after year, concretized our experiences too. The stories became unchanging, compared to oral traditions where the filter of new experiences changes the stories every time they are told, even by the same storyteller. This, too, changed how we understood the world around us.

Starting with a research grant to study magic in indigenous cultures, Abram found that he lived in relationship with the surrounding environment differently when he was "home" in the United States than when he was overseas meeting and learning from other "less advanced" cultures, where ties were much closer to the natural world. He found that he missed the deep sense of connection that he felt in those other cultures, and so he set out to try to figure out what had changed in human society to cut us off from that sense of natural connection.

I certainly understand now why Abram was picked by Utne Reader as "[o]ne of the hundred visionaries who are changing the world." I've been interested in the environment and the human role within it for most of my life. This intriguing book literally has me changing my understanding of who and what I am, as well as changing my understanding of my relationship with the natural world around me. I truly can't think of too many books I've read in my life that I can say that about.

Numinous Mundane

Sometimes there is incredible beauty in the mundane.

This morning I awoke at 5 a.m., thinking the dawn was beginning because of the light coming in through the bedroom window. As I slowly gained more awareness, I realized that the light was the glow of the full moon, shining with a luminous aura through the dewdrops caught on the screen of the window....

Compare and Contrast

Two books have recently come into my life that make an interesting pair. I serendipitously read them back to back, which highlighted their interconnectedness.

The first, The Feminine Mystique, is Betty Friedan's classic from the 1960's about "the housewife syndrome." In it, Friedan highlighted the isolation and stagnation that was occurring in the lives of housewives as their husbands and children spent increasing amounts of time away from home and they themselves became little more than tools of consumption for the marketplace. The solution, to Friedan (and to entire generations of women), was to get out of the house, preferably with a career.

The second book, Radical Homemakers by Shannon Hayes, has just recently been published. Hayes's premise is that the two career family has us chasing our tails, having (or wanting) to purchase more and more to make our lives more efficient and more "meaningful," then needing to work more and/or work harder to make more money to pay for our purchases. This leaves us stressed out and overtired, with no time to enjoy the myriad of expensive things we've bought...or to simply enjoy each other and our homes. With our standard of living based on two salaries, it also leaves us as vulnerable or more vulnerable to economic chaos from unexpected job loss. Her solution is to return the family household to a unit of production, rather than solely of consumption, which requires commitment from all adults in the household and involves building community and interrelatedness. She herself has pursued this path, and she has researched 20 other "radical homemakers" from among the many who replied to her solicitation for guinea pigs when she began writing this book.

I read The Feminine Mystique first. As I worked my way through it, I kept thinking two things to myself: 1) "Why didn't I read this in college or in my 20's? I can so relate to these 1950's housewives! How sad is this that I've been so far behind in understanding what was happening to me?" and 2) "Friedan doesn't address childrearing and caretaking. Who's going to raise the children? Who's going to care for family members, both when they are sick and when they are well? Isn't there more to life than working?"

In the new introduction for her book, written by Betty Friedan in 1997, Friedan herself shares deep concerns over the fact that "two generations later" careers, both male and female, are still based on the model of the 1950's male with a stay-at-home wife to care for the home and children. So both working men and women are getting overworked and stressed out. Meanwhile, women are still getting paid less than 75% of what men earn for the same job, so employers are letting more men go and keeping the "cheaper" women. This is causing increased anger and hostility in men, who blame women in the workplace, rather than their employers, for their loss of money and prestige. Meanwhile, the ultra rich are getting richer and richer and nobody is really paying attention to that. It's much too easy to blame each other.

As I read Radical Homemakers, I kept thinking to myself, "Yes, this is what Greg and I were thinking over the years when we tried to produce some of our own food, keep our wants to a dull roar, and avoid getting too caught up in consumerism!" Hayes keeps in mind the lessons from The Feminine Mystique, warning of the absolute importance of interconnectedness and community building to help stave off the feeling of isolation. To keep radical homemakers mentally growing, she notes the requirement for self-learning that this path requires, since so many of these small-scale production skills are almost lost. She also touches upon the need to pursue personal and community interests, especially after radical homemaker has become comfortable with their productivity level.

As to why I was relating so strongly to "the housewife syndrome"? I think it was because of Greg's and my mobile lifestyle. Moving so often kept us from being able to develop the interconnectedness and sense of deep community that both supports and is a gift of the lifestyle. With Greg's job requiring long hours away from home, it was all too easy for me to get relatively isolated and lonely.

I find the radical homemakers' lifestyle very appealing...at least in theory! I am reminded of Greg's grandparents' life during the Depression in Oklahoma: they spent 10 years on a farm during the Dust Bowl. They were "dirt poor", but they raised 5 children and kept everyone fed and clothed without anyone having a paid job or being responsible to an employer. It was obviously hard work, and they chose to leave the farm when World War II gave them other options (and their children began leaving home), but they survived. In fact, their son doesn't even remember feeling particularly poor during those Depression years - "There were a lot of others worse off than we were."

I do some of the lifestyle already - I garden and can, at least a little. I prefer shopping at local businesses, antique shops and thrift stores to buying from big box stores. I watch little TV and pay even less attention to the ads. At least in part, our cars were chosen for their mileage, and they are far from new. I am not known for keeping up with the fashion industry. :-) There's obviously a lot more I (we) could do, but for now I'm grateful to know there are others who value some of the same things we value.

Serendipity shines again!

Just a Walk....

With Becker having decided that we need to take a walk every morning, I've given in and also decided that it's a good idea, at least when I have the time. So he and I struck out this morning, just before noon, taking both my camera and my binoculars.

The last of the aromatic asters are in full bloom right now and they are absolutely bustling with butterflies, skippers, flies and bees. Everytime Becker or I or one of the cats gets near enough to brush part of the plant, clouds of insects briefly arise, then settle peacefully back down again.

Along the creek, the white of the poison ivy berries really stood out, highlighted by the sun against the dark green of the redcedars and the elm and hedge leaves. A few bright red leaves remained, demonstrating again how important it is to be careful about picking up leaves for their color in Kansas!

Speaking of redcedars, too, the blue of the "berries" on this heavily laden tree seemed to bring the blue of the sky down within touching distance for us Earth-bound mortals.

Before I headed out back to the pasture, I sat for a while on one of my stone benches and looked around to see what birds were active. A song sparrow, a flicker, some blue jays, and a couple cardinals were busy, as were a bunch of yellow-rumped warblers (fondly also known as butterbutts) flitting through the treetops. For a while I even got to watch through the binoculars as a butterbutt greedily chowed down on poison ivy berries. I wonder where those new plants will get deposited!

Finally making it out to the back 5, I had to stop several times along the path to de-seed my socks - the threeawn grass (Aristida sp.) has been giving me numerous demonstrations of how it likes to travel and burrow in through the action of its long awns. Here's a closeup of one of the seeds, half screwed into my sock....

...and here is a picture of one of the entire plants, corraled between my socked foot and my clogged foot. They're not very impressive plants and they are easy to overlook, at least if their seeds aren't ripe. The seeds can actually cause harm to the mouths of livestock through their burrowing activities. Threeawn grass is an annual that moves in to overgrazed pastures - I have much less of it than I used to, but it's far from gone.

On my way back to the house, I focused my binoculars on the first white-crowned sparrow I've seen this fall. (I've heard quite a few singing, "Old Sam Peabody-Peabody-Peabody," in the yard, so I knew they were back, but this was the first I'd seen.) I've started putting out my feeders, but I still have to get some fresh black oil sunflower seed and disinfect the platform feeders; then I'll be seeing these guys in the backyard, right off the deck.

It was a gorgeous day for a walk, so I'm glad that I listened to Becker's preferences. I'm sure he'll be happy to keep reminding me every morning now!

Blue Sky Birding

Becker was anxious for a walk this morning, so I set aside the laundry basket and away we went. For the first time in quite a while, I took binoculars instead of a camera and I was rewarded with a rather respectable series of bird sightings.

The draw was especially active this morning. First of all I noticed a ruby-crowned kinglet, followed shortly by a yellow-rumped warbler and an orange-crowned warbler (or two or three). As I was following their fluttering from tree branch to tree branch, I noticed a big "something or other" fly in behind them - when I focused on the movement there, it turned out to be a pair of flickers.

Blue jays flew in and out several times, and I kept hearing cardinals peeping, but didn't actually see one until I was walking back to the house. Two other woodpeckers came by to say hello, a male red-bellied and a female downy. Several chickadees joined in the activity for a while...

...but the most interesting sighting was a hawk "doing lazy circles in the sky." As I watched it, I was positive that it was an accipiter - probably a Cooper's based on size - despite behavior that was unusual for the species. I looked for a white patch at the base of the tail and didn't see it, but I did note that the head seemed small in proportion to the body and the tail was fairly square with a wide terminal black band tipped with white and smaller bands towards the body.

Getting back to the kitchen and looking in my guidebook, I'm now thoroughly unsure of which of 3 species it was: the proportionate head size and tail shape was sharp-shinned hawk, the size and lack of white rump patch was Cooper's hawk, and the behavior and size was northern harrier. At this point, my best guess is harrier. Whatever it was, it was fun to watch, but I'll try not to pre-categorize next time!

Piggy-Back Maternity

While out doing a bit of fall gardening yesterday morning, I stumbled across this awesome example of motherhood and was able to get her photo. This is a wolf spider, with her "clutch" of baby spiders (spiderlings) covering her abdomen. Mama's body was about 2" in length - she was a true "big mama"!

Wolf spiders are wonderful predators and great to have in your yard and garden. They primarily eat insects, which they often catch by active hunting, just like a wolf...which is how they got their name. They do not spin a web.

The female makes an egg sac which she carries around under her abdomen until the spiderlings develop. Then she opens the sac and the spiderlings climb out onto her abdomen, where they ride for a week or more. I love seeing a female wolf spider with her babies riding piggy back!

Because of their size, wolf spiders scare many people, but they are very beneficial and will only bite if picked up and handled. (Their bite is similar to a bee sting in pain intensity.) Wolf spiders move rapidly and are "dirt" colored, so they can actually be rather hard to see and even harder to catch. Rather than catch (or kill) a wolf spider, just smile when you see one and send a quick mental thank-you its way for the insect control it spends its life providing!

Dainty Sulfur Captured

In an earlier post, I mentioned seeing a dainty sulfur butterfly but being unable to get a good photo. Well, last Saturday I was able to get a nice photo, at least of the underside of the wings. To give you a sense of scale, the aromatic aster that this little one was feeding at is about 1 1/4" in diameter.

Bumble Bee Confusion

This is confusion on my part, not on the part of the bumble bees I've seen, who presumably are quite comfortable with their own personal identities.

I've seen several small bumble bees and occasional large bumble bees that all look very much alike - yellow hair on the front of their thorax, plus yellow hair on their abdomen, except for the last 2 segments, which are covered with black hair. Having searched through BugGuide.net, I'm quite sure that these are all American Bumble Bee (Bombus pensylvanicus). I'm guessing that the big ones are the queens and the small ones are the workers.

Then, just last Saturday, I saw this long individual, with the rear abdomen completely covered in yellow-brown hair. It looked like a different species to me, but after searching BugGuide.net and other identification sites, I've decided that it is the male American Bumble Bee.

Oh, and I thought this photo was interesting - I guess the wheel bug decided that the bumble bee was too big to tackle, because it did not attack despite obvious interest.

The Gluttony of Wheel Bugs

The wheel bugs (Arilus cristatus) were out in force last Saturday, the last time I was taking photos of insects in the garden. While praying mantids have the reputation of being the fiercest predators you can have on your side, in my garden I have to give that accolade to the wheel bugs!

At one point I had 3 wheel bugs on one goldenrod plant, all easily visible in one camera view field! That shot isn't as good as these individual ones, though, all of them on that same goldenrod and within about 45 minutes....

Wheel bug 1 eating unknown moth or skipper, 1:35 p.m.....

Wheel bug 2 eating small bee, 2:07 p.m.....

Wheel bug 3 eating female sachem skipper, 2:11 p.m.....

(Note: Although I have labeled them wheel bug 1, wheel bug 2, and wheel bug 3, I have no idea if these were the same individual or different individuals. It was during this time span, though, that I saw all 3 wheel bugs at one time on the same goldenrod plant.)

Great Golden Digger Wasp

I met a new yardmate yesterday - a great golden digger wasp (Sphex ichneumoneus). Isn't that a cool name? She (he?) was nectaring on my Wichita Mountains goldenrod - the overgrown stuff with the bad case of rust (that I presume developed after it spent most of the summer almost overwhelmed by seedling brown-eyed Susans). To give you perspective, this little black and red beauty is an inch long...at least! She totally ignored my attempts to get the camera close and closer as I took photos, so the nectar must have been pretty darn good and not have been too affected by the rust.

Doing my normal bit of research after finding a new species that I don't recognize, I learned that great golden digger wasps are closely related to the giant cicada killer wasps, with very similar habits. One big difference, though, is that their prey are grasshoppers - crickets, short-horned grasshoppers and long-horned grasshoppers.

Like the cicada killers, the females did a hole in the ground, then go in search of their prey. Finding it, they paralyze it and drag it back to their nest. Once they've stocked the nest adequately with (in this case) paralyzed grasshoppers, they lay an egg on each grasshopper and seal up the nest. The eggs hatch out shortly afterwards and the young wasp grubs eat the grasshoppers provided, staying in their snug earthy nests until the following summer, when the life cycle repeats.

These are not aggressive wasps - according to all the reading I've done, you basically have to handle them or step on them to get stung, and handling them doesn't guarantee a sting. If they do sting, however, the sting is very powerful, so it's wise to be a bit cautious around them. There are numerous reports of people coexisting quite peacefully with great golden digger wasps building nest holes in the ground right beside their patios or in their walkways.

The adults feed entirely on nectar and plant sap.

Birds can apparently be quite problematic, learning to harass the wasps and get them to drop their paralyzed grasshoppers, which the birds then snarf up.

Texas A & M has a great write-up on great golden digger wasps, including a fascinating account of some research performed on their seemingly thoughtful behavior in building and provisioning their nests.

I'm definitely glad to have this gentle giant sharing our yard and gardens, and I'll be keeping an eye out for them in the future.

Skippers Are Hard

Skippers are hard. They are just plain hard.

First of all, the little dears often land with their wings folded into something called the "jet plane position," where the hind wings are held parallel to the surface they are resting on and the front wings are held perpendicular to it. This virtually guarantees that you can't see the front wings and the back wings at the same time, either on the top or the bottom wing surface, because they are facing in totally different directions.

Secondly, skippers are masters of three confusing color/pattern trends: 1) males and females of the same species often look somewhat different from each other, 2) there is a lot of color and pattern variability within each species, and 3) the species of skippers often look amazingly similar to each other.

Skippers are just plain hard.

Maybe I need to stop a minute and explain what a skipper is, for those of you who aren't familiar with them. Skippers are close cousins to the butterflies and moths; sometimes I think of them as an intermediate form between butterflies and moths. They are usually active during the day, they tend to be rather small, they tend to be fast fliers, and their colors tend to be orange to brown to tan, usually muddled looking with some sort of indistinct spotting. Because skipper bodies are stout and look hairy, while their wings often seem small in proportionate, they are not very graceful little insects and generally aren't considered "pretty." Interestingly, though, their eyes often seem extremely large and exceptionally black to me.

Skippers are just plain hard.

Because skippers are so hard and so often nondescript, I tend not to take a lot of photos of them. However, with my new determination to catalog the biodiversity of my little acreage, I didn't flinch on Thursday. Here are the skipper species that I've identified so far....

The easiest skipper to identify from Thursday's photo-shoot was the Common Checkered-Skipper (Pyrgus communis). (Why are so many of the butterflies and skippers that I'm finding called "common"?!) It's a very pretty little thing that conveniently holds its wings out while feeding, so I had no trouble seeing the pattern on the upper surface of its wings at all.

It almost looks like a small, stout butterfly. Common Checkered-Skippers use mallows as their larval food plants and are considered the most common and widespread skipper in all of North America. They are far from the most common skipper in my yard, but that certainly doesn't prove a thing. Common or not, their black & white checked pattern really appeals to me, and I love that touch of irridescent blue close to their body.

The next beauty contestant that I figured out was the Fiery Skipper (Hylephila phyleus), one of the orange, grass skippers. Fiery Skippers are fans of the jet-plane position while feeding, but I got a good enough photo to be fairly sure of my identification on this one. With the larval food plant listed as Bermuda grass and the depressingly large amount of Bermuda grass in my yard, my certainty level is pretty high.

This guy (above) is a male, based on the black "toothed," rear margin of the upper surface on his hind wing.

Evidently Bermuda grass was a brief theme in skipper identification for me; the next skipper I was able to identify was the Sachem (Atalopedes campestris), another orange, grass skipper whose caterpillars chow down on Bermuda grass, as well as on that gardening favorite, crab grass, and on other grasses.

Like the Fiery Skipper above, the Sachem in this photo, with its squarish black spot on the upper surface of the front wing, is a male. Note his long proboscis arching down to suck up the delicious aster nectar!

For the time being, these are the only skippers that I was able to identify from the photos that I took. I'm excited, though - I'm learning a bit more about a "new" group of living things, and that's always a fun proposition. I took a bunch of photos this afternoon of the butterflies, skippers and other insects feeding on the aromatic asters in the front gardens. I'm looking forward to seeing what images I was actually able to capture today!

The Beauty of a Common Butterfly

So the last butterfly that I took photos of on Thursday is the orange sulfur (Colias eurytheme). Interestingly enough, this is one of those butterflies that has 2 color forms of females - some are yellow/orange, like the males, and some are white. I have no idea what the evolutionary advantage would be to the species by having 2 female color forms. (A Lepidopteran "blondes have more fun" sort of thing?) Anyway, I was lucky enough to see and photograph both forms on Thursday.

Sulfurs tend to nectar at flowers with their wings closed, so usually you only see the undersides of their wings, like the photos immediately below. Both of these butterflies are females; you can tell with the yellow form, on the left, because of the wing margin with yellow "bubbles" in the darker portions seen faintly through somewhat translucent wings. The dot pattern on the underside of the wings of the butterfly on the right identifies it as an orange sulfur; the white color tells you immediately, then, that it's a female.

Occasionally, you'll catch the butterflies slowly fanning their wings open and closed or you'll catch them as they are beginning to fly - then you can see what the upper side of their wings look like. The male sulfur, on the left (with the neatly defined dark areas along the wing margins), is probably an orange sulfur, although he doesn't have a great deal of orange in his wings. Without the orange, he could be a clouded sulfur, which looks very similar but has no orange wash to its wings at all. However, the yellow on his wings is very deep in tone and I saw no other obvious clouded sulfurs, so I expect he's actually a yellowish orange sulfur. The white butterfly on the right is the female white form.

Very occasionally you happen to catch a butterfly in mid-flight. Then you get to see some of the interesting maneuvers that their wings go through as they fly, maneuvers that occur much too fast for our eyes to note them without the magic of the camera pausing the movement. Sometimes the movements are graceful, as on the left, and sometimes they aren't!

One way or another, I'm sure that you've seen sulfurs before - they are so common that most of us just overlook them without paying much attention to them at all. There are 8 different species here in south-central Kansas, though, and that's not including the accidental adventurers, so it can be fun to learn to tell them apart.

As far as theses orange sulfurs go, many different legumes serve as their larval food plants, including alfalfa and clovers. The abundance of their larval food plants probably goes a long way in explaining their abundance overall.

Take a look next time you see a "yellow" butterfly and see if it's an orange sulfur or, perhaps, some other sulfur species. If you've read (and you look) carefully, you may even be able to tell if it's a male or female!

Getting Serious About Butterflies

It's been years since I seriously tried to identify butterflies and skippers on a regular basis, but I've decided to start a database of all the plant and animal species that I find on our property...which will encourage me to brush up on all sorts of identification skills and, hopefully, keep learning more and more about what I'm observing. With that in mind, I have worked on the photos I took on Thursday with an eye to identifying every insect that I could.

Identifying some of these little babies is a real challenge, especially identifying them with photos only, rather than with dead specimens. That said, I'm not in the mood to do the whole "catch, kill, spread and pin, then identify and store" routine, so I'm going to do the best I can with the digital images.

First of all, along those lines, I have decided that the white aster growing in 10' wide colonies in this often wet swale is Panicled Aster, Symphyotrichum lanceolatum. Just so you and I both know what the flower is that we're seeing in all these photos....

Moving on, and in no particular order, here are the butterflies that I found feeding on the panicled aster two days ago....

One of the most widespread and beloved of butterflies is the Painted Lady (Vanessa cardui). With its caterpillars feeding on thistles, mallows and many other common plants, the painted lady is found throughout North America, even up to the Hudson Bay and almost to Alaska. The adults don't survive where the temperatures are consistently below freezing, so the northern reaches of its range are annually repopulated by individuals moving up from the southern regions.

The common buckeye (Junonia coenia) is one butterfly that I always recognize, but despite its "common" name and the fact that its larval plants are fairly widespread too, I don't see it all that frequently. Some of its larval plants are plantains and snapdragons. The large eyespots on the buckeye's wings are a diversionary tactic - a bird or other predator pursuing one is tricked into going after the big "eyes", taking a bite out of the wing, and thus letting the butterfly fly on, a little tattered for the experience but with all its "important parts" intact.

Colored as if costumed for Halloween, the Pearl Crescent (Phyciodes tharos) is quite a common little beauty with a range that covers the entire east half of the U.S. down into Mexico. Asters are its larval plant as well as, in this case, its nectar plant. This is one of those butterflies where you think to yourself, "I've seen this one so often, but what is it called?!"

The "rarest" butterfly I identified from Thursday's gleanings (and I'm using the term "rare" VERY loosely here) is the Texan Crescent (Phyciodes texana). The Texan Crescent is a very pretty, little, black butterfly whose larval food is twin-seeds and their relatives in the acanthus family. The actual range for the Texan Crescent is considered to be far south of Kansas, in mid-Texas and south, but they stray north occasionally and this appears to be one of those years. The males apparently hang out in shaded gullies, waiting to pounce on the females as they fly by, so the habitat I found it in is pretty appropriate.

I found one other butterfly, the orange sulfur (Colias eurytheme) feeding on the panicled asters. However, I took several photos of it that I want to share, so I think I'll make a separate post to talk about and share those images.

Last but certainly not least, in this post most of my information about the range, larval plants and general habits is coming from Butterflies of North America by Jim P. Brock and Kenn Kaufman, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, 2003, 383 pp.

Sunset over the Back 5

I took this two years ago (and the silver bluestem is much thicker now than it was then), but it still seemed appropriate to post it tonight....