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Photo of the Week – April 5, 2013
A few shorebirds are starting to show up along the Platte River. The first to come each spring are usually the ubiquitous and noisy killdeer, followed by the taller and more reserved yellowlegs....
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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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Capturing Post-Wildfire Recovery Through Timelapse Photography
Last week, I posted that I’d been up at our Niobrara Valley Preserve, helping to set up timelapse cameras to document the recovery of that site from the wildfire last July. Back in February,...
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A Prickly Confrontation
While we were setting up timelapse cameras at the Niobrara Valley Preserve a couple weeks ago, I had an encounter with a creature I’d never seen up close before. It was evening, and Jeff Dale was...
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Photo of the Week – May 9, 2013
A red-sided garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis). The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies, Nebraska. Click on this or other photos for a larger, sharper image. I ran across this beautiful garter...
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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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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 14, 2013
This was an interesting week for observations. Here are some of the things I saw and learned. Our burn from last week is greening up nicely. This photo was taken one week after the burn. We’re...
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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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2013 Platte Prairies Field Day – Reminder and Agenda
Just a quick reminder that our Platte River Prairies Field Day is Friday July 12. We will have hikes and presentations on plant identification, invasive species, reptiles, amphibians, small mammals,...
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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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Photo of the Week – July 18, 2013
We had a terrific field day last week – thanks to the more than 100 people who came out to explore our Platte River Prairies with us. There were two neat wildlife discoveries during the day. The first...
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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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Hubbard Fellowship Blog – Photos by Eliza
Guest Post by Eliza Perry, one of our 2013-14 Hubbard Fellows (all photos are by Eliza Perry). The past month has been wild. Instead of writing up a succinct summary, I decided to share a few of my...
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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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Photo of the Week – August 15, 2013
I took my two sons up to the Niobrara Valley Preserve earlier this week for one last outing before school started. It was fun to see the Preserve through their eyes. While I was looking at impacts...
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