The Prairie Ecologist

Kim and I recently moved across town. We waited a year before starting to work on the yard and garden, but things are underway now. Kim’s in charge of the vast majority of the landscaping, but I’m putting together a strip of prairie plants along our east boundary. It’ll take a few years to fill in all the space, both because I’ll keep adding plants and because the early plants will grow and spread. Meanwhile, some of this year’s additions are already blooming and attracting insects.

The garden webworm moth is known as a pest in corn crops, but also across lots of other food and garden plants, including alfalfa, beans, cotton, strawberries and many others. Here, it’s feeding on upright prairie coneflower.

I’ve seen a surprisingly wide variety of visitors so far, but some of the most abundant are insects that are usually categorized as pests. I’ve complained about that characterization before, so I won’t go over all that ground again. However, most of the “pests” showing up on my prairie plants are native insects that also happen to have adapted well to the bounty of food plants humans have spread across the landscape. Their ability to adapt has (unfairly, I think) earned them names that reflect our frustration with them and made them targets.

The corn earworm moth (above), according to Wikipedia, is the second most important economic pest in North America, next to the codling moth. That’s quite a reputation for a pretty nondescript native moth that is also a helpful pollinator for a lot of native plants. Because it feeds on a wide range of human crops, it has other names, including the cotton bollworm and tomato fruit worm.

The cabbage looper moth (below) is a native owlet moth whose larval form happens to enjoy cruciferous vegetable plants such as cabbage, broccoli, and many others. Never mind that it also feeds on well over 150 other species of plants, or that it is a pollinator insect as an adult. Because it eats some of the same plants we eat, we have developed lots of ways to kill it.

Cabbage looper moth on black-eyed Susan.

The American sunflower moth (below) doesn’t cause us any problems in our yard because we don’t mind if it eats a bunch of the seeds from our black-eyed Susans or sunflowers. If I was raising sunflowers for food, oil, or to support my family, however, I’m sure I’d look at them differently.

These petals have been sewn together with silk by an American sunflower moth caterpillar.

Here’s the caterpillar itself, feeding on the developing seeds of this black-eyed Susan.

Look, I get it. We fight back against some of the insects that eat the vegetables in our home garden, too. Some of those, like the cabbage white butterfly, are species introduced to North America, but others are native species that are competing with us for our garden produce. The world is messy.

However, I do think it’s important to keep a certain perspective on these insects and remember that while we are sometimes in conflict, that doesn’t mean the entire species is evil or worthy of eradication. It’s also vital to be thoughtful and careful about how we attack “pests” that are eating our food or other agricultural crops. That includes both treating crops only when there’s a high enough abundance of those insects to be significant. It also means using pesticides and other treatments that are as selective as possible and minimize impacts to other species. We still have a lot of room to grow in this regard.

Keeping a proper perspective can be difficult in a complex world, though, so I’m not here to tell you what your particular perspective should be. As an example of how complicated this is, here (below) is a photo I took this morning of what I think is a European paper wasp in my prairie garden. As the name suggests, this is not a species native to North America, and it has apparently been spreading westward across the continent since about the mid-1990s.

European paper wasp covered in morning dew.

There is evidence from some parts of our continent that the European species may be displacing our native paper wasps. Some of you might think that’s not something to weep about since paper wasps are often unpopular, especially given their penchant for building and defending nests in/on the same structures we live in. However, we don’t really know all the potential ramifications of this continued invasion. Should I have squished that wasp instead of (or after) photographing it? I’ll bet there are those who would advocate for exactly that and I don’t know really have a good counterargument. I didn’t squish it, though, because this is a complicated topic I don’t yet understand well enough to form a strong opinion.

Oof.

Ok, that’s enough heavy stuff. Despite the complexity of some of the insect species and their actions, I really am enjoying seeing what species are finding and colonizing our new prairie garden. I’m looking forward to the next few years – and beyond – as both the plant and invertebrate communities continue to grow and diversify.

Here are some photos (and a video) of some other insects and plants I’ve seen in our garden over the last few days. I think they’re all pretty non-controversial.

A yellow-shouldered drone fly on black-eyed Susan

I hope all of you who are fortunate enough to live near some green space have the opportunity to see and appreciate similar insect diversity. It’s fun to see how popular native plants are getting with the public and how often I see them used in landscaping. That’s really helpful in lots of ways.

However, as I’ve written about before, putting native plants in your landscaping doesn’t necessarily preclude you from adding some non-native species as well. Many of the same insects l see in our prairie garden are also visiting our zinnias, salvia plants, viburnums, and other horticultural species around the yard. There’s nothing wrong with being a purist, if that’s what makes you happy, but it’s not the only path to providing good backyard habitat.

Ok, I’m off to grab some lunch and see what’s happening out in the garden.

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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