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Prairie Seed Dispersal
Plants don’t have the ability to walk or fly, but many can send their seeds far out into the world. Some seeds have the capability to travel very long distances, giving plants the opportunity to...
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Butterfly Aggression
We started seeing our first regal fritillary butterflies of the season last week, and began our second year of data collection on their habitat use in the Platte River Prairies. As always, male...
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Photo of the Week – June 30, 2011
It’s a great time to hike the trails at The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies! Regal fritillaries are out in force, along with a number of other butterfly and insect species, and big...
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Nebraska Wildflower Field Guide
About 20 years ago, Jon Farrar, one of Nebraska’s preeminent naturalists and photographers published a fantastic field guide to the wildflowers of Nebraska and the Great Plains. Unfortunately, the...
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A Soldier Beetle Occupation
Everywhere I look, I see soldier beetles. They’re in my yard, they’re in my prairies, and now I think they’re getting into my head (figuratively speaking). The linden tree in our front yard is...
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Photo of the Week – June 8, 2012
I’m sticking with a beetle theme this week, it seems. My last post focused on the currently ubiquitous soldier beetle. This one spotlights the dogbane beetle. A dogbane beetle on a dogbane plant....
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Photo of the Week – June 15, 2012
Milkweeds have very distinctive flowers, with unique shapes and features. I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that their pollination story is equally interesting. Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)...
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Evolution in Milkweed-Eating Insects
Not many insects can feed on milkweed. Milkweed plants produce a toxin that disables a protein in animals – a protein that facilitates important functions such as muscle contraction. Only a small...
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Photo of the Week – January 17, 2013
Ok, I know milkweed seeds have been done to death by photographers. I, personally, have somewhere around a zillion milkweed seed photos. But milkweed seeds in the winter? With hoar frost? And a...
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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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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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Photo of the Week – December 13, 2013
Monday morning was cold here. If I remember correctly, it was about 4 degrees below zero when I decided to go for a walk with my camera. (Because, hey, what else would you do on a morning like that?)...
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Photo of the Week – July 2, 2015
Independence Day is this weekend. Fireworks have been going off in my my neighborhood for days now as people who apparently equate noise with patriotism are enjoying their right to put that feeling...
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Monarch Conservation Strategies
Last week, I attended a conference aimed at creating a statewide conservation plan for monarch butterflies. The meeting was really informative and thought-provoking. I learned a great deal about the...
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More Than One Milkweed
I recently wrote an article for NEBRASKAland magazine about milkweed and the surprising number of milkweed species that can be found in Nebraska. (See the most recent online issue here). In total,...
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Photo of the Week – November 3, 2016
To this prairie photographer, milkweed seeds are like candy – I just can’t get enough. As I’ve walked around this fall, I’ve had a very difficult time walking past any milkweed plant without stopping...
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Photo of the Week – September 27, 2018
One of my favorite aspects of my square meter photography project has been the chance to closely follow the lives of individual organisms over time. For example, I’ve closely followed the progress of...
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