Donna VanBuecken
While our friend Mark was busily cutting up a fallen native Green Ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) tree, a Hummingbird Clearwing (Hemaris thysbe) moth was busily nectaring on native Bee Balm (Monarda fistulosa).
You can still hear Mark’s chainsaw in the background while this Monarch (Danaus plexippus) butterfly was busily nectaring on native Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium purpureum).
Mark your calendar to attend a presentation by Professor Emeritus in Conservation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Stanley A Temple at Prairie Fest on this Saturday, August 3, 2019 held at the Gottfried Prairie and Arboretum in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. His presentation entitled “Monarch Butterflies, Private Land and Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic will be at 12:30PM. He will speak about management practices on privately owned land which have helped to reverse the drastic decline in the Monarch population over the last ten years.
Prairie Fest is open to the public and is FREE, including Dr Temple’s keynote presentation.
For more information, go to Prairie Fest. Wild Ones Fox Valley Area Chapter will be an exhibitor along with many other conservation organizations.
Note: Stan Temple was the keynote speaker at WOFVA Chapter’s 2015 Toward Harmony with Nature Conference. He’s a very charismatic and knowledgeable speaker. I know you’ll enjoy his presentation.
By now you’re probably getting tired of reading about my visit to the Tallgrass Prairie, but we took so many little videos of what we saw, I just had to share a few with you. Our vacation to the Flint Hills Tallgrass Prairie was truly another trip of a lifetime.
During our mid-June 2019 tour of the Tallgrass Prairie area of Kansas, we experienced thunderstorms several evenings with windy weather during the day.
Here at this overlook along the Flint Hills Scenic Byway, it was so windy I couldn’t hold the camera still, but I did manage to get a few frames of this Western Meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta) and some audio of its song.
The swaying of the Black-Eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) and the Daisy Fleabane (Erigeron strigosus) is a good indication of how hard the wind was blowing. The wind made it difficult to take well-focused photos of the beautiful native Kansas forbs.
The brilliant orange color of the Butterflyweed (Asclepias tuberosa)was awesome. I guess the pollinators thought so too, because throughout our search for native wildflowers we found a variety of insects nectaring on its nourishing offerings. Shown here is the Black Swallowtail (Papilio polyxenes) butterfly. Listen to the wind in the background.
One of the awesome videos we took was of these two Common Buckeyes (Junonia coenia) on Sullivan’s Milkweed (Asclepias sullivantii) at a garden spot along the Flint Hills Scenic Byway garden.
During our mid-June 2019 visit to the Flint Hills area of the Tallgrass Prairie, we saw many beautiful wildflowers and the pollinators with which they evolved. The native prairie plant known as Sullivant’s Milkweed (Asclepias sullivantii) shown here offers a feast for a Monarch (Danaus plexippus) butterfly. The blue plant is called Common Spiderwort (Tradescantia ohiensis). Sullivant’s Milkweed was the predominant plant we saw throughout our touring. Great habitat for the Monarch butterflies.
I know I haven’t talked about it much in my blog, but my husband John and I are train buffs. Most of our vacations center around some location where we can search out steam engines and other railroad related “stuff.” When I’m on my own, I’m afraid there is no exception. The sound of a train whistle makes me giddy and we need to go in search of its origin. Sue was very patient with me.
During our drive over to the Tallgrass Prairie, we stopped in Des Moines, Iowa for gas. While there we caught this awesome sight of two BNSF trains passing each other in the local train yard. Listen to the train whistle in the background. First you’ll see a four engine train led by engine 6761 from the left and then a train led by engine 7792 passes it from the right. It was a thrill for me; not so much for Sue….
Reference my earlier posts Tallgrass Prairie and Flint Hills Tallgrass Prairie – Part 1. On our second day in Kansas, we finished the Flint Hills National Scenic Byway tour and saw some lovely towns and more awesome prairie plants.
Wow! We certainly got an eye full! The locals told us this was a good year to view the native wildflowers. Everything looked so lush and green. The colors were extraordinarily brilliant this year; perhaps because of all the rain they’ve gotten.
This video taken by Susan Forbes is just a short memory of the rushing sounds of the Upper Falls at Chase Lake, Kansas near the community of Cottonwood Falls. See also Chase Lake.