Mid June...Not Bad!

 

 

Things come on fast once the weather turns hot and even more so if the rain actually starts.  We aren't out of the drought "woods" yet but it has improved from the past 3 years...very grateful for that!

The Dickcissels are back this June and are a happy lot once again - I swear we have one every 50 feet down the road and several in the pastures as well...its great!  They are even nesting in the pasture here - very fun!

 

And the Bobolinks did show up in the pasture across the road...occasionally they'll chase one another across the road to our place so we can get some enjoyment out of their company!  It was a special time when they nested on our place and when we'd see them up the county blacktops and highway pastures as well, but, again...I am grateful for what we still have.

 

The spring prairie flowers are happy with our rain too, and the heat is moving them along faster than I can keep up...every time I find something new blooming, its finished before I know it...help!!!

 

 

One evening I was down in the SE corner of the north pasture shooting the While Wild Indigos and just as I started walking away a beautiful female Ruby-throated Hummingbird was suddenly right in front of me - feeding on the White Wild Indigos!   The light was subsiding as it was mid evening, but I had the camera on the tripod already and managed some nice photos of her - really fun!

 

 

 We are always fortunate to have Meadowlarks in our neighborhood.  I do have difficulty telling "Eastern" from "Western" - UNLESS they sing...Western Meadowlarks are so much more vocal and melodious than Eastern's are...and we get Westerns here quite often each summer.  

 

One day a week or so back I was in the studio working and heard a beautiful Western Meadowlark belting it out, and it sounded so loud I thought it must be on the barn roof.  I stepped out the door and it was right in front of me on the grass across the driveway...maybe 20 feet away!  We've never had a "Lawn" Lark before!!!  Crazy neat!  I stepped back in and grabbed the camera only to see a Robin dive bomb it...maybe it was stealing his thunder?  But it flit just another 20 feet or more toward the crib so I walked over by the barn's corner and took a few pictures of it in the fresh mowed grass.  I watched it pull a worm up and it commenced to beating it into submission...maybe that's why the Robin didn't want it around - encroaching on its food supply?!

 

It sang in the yard for another day or two but is now back to it's normal perches around the pasture and down along the road.

 

 

Another fun change this year has been the Eastern Kingbirds.  We always see them down along the road...flitting from fence wire to fence post to electrical wire and back.  This year they have taken up residence in the yard!  During noon time Georgie and I would be sitting at the kitchen table having lunch and we watch the Kingbirds flycathing right outside the kitchen windows!  We noticed the favored perches the birds would use to dart out and catch bugs on the wing.  One spot was an old Common Mullein stalk from last year...made a great perch for them.

 

I decided this would be the perfect opportunity to get some closer shots of these guys...I set up the tripod out side and set the camera on it with a electric remote transmitter/trigger.  While I sat eating lunch that day I was holding the trigger in one hand and eating with the other...click, click, click - "Wow that was a good one!"  

 

Went through quite a few shots and missed quite a few too, but very happy with the results...fun birds!

The days are moving quickly now, even though there's more daylight time - it's still packed with chores and work...inside and out.

I hope you have a good summer ahead yourselves...be good to one another!

 

 

Trying to Keep Up!

"Little Sioux River Valley Sunrise"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view) 

Its been very hard keeping up with everything lately!  Life is more complicated than we give it at face value, isn't it!?  The work in the studio and around the acreage is keeping us on our toes lately...this is always a busy time of year.

 

I've also been trying to keep an eye on our pasture here because I often can use it as a gauge as to when things might be at their best on the prairies nearby.  I had been noticing our Dotted Liatris (Liatris punctata) and Rough Blazing Star (Liatris aspera) beginning to look pretty good, so I thought I'd run off to Waterman Prairie this morning where I know these things are in good number...see if I could catch them before they get past their prime.

 

When I got up everything was really socked in outside; I actually woke a few minutes before the alarm rang - a Coyote out front of our place woke me with its yowling; sounded like it was missing someone or feeling left out!

 

I procrastinated a bit, not sure if the fog would lift enough for some decent images, but eventually talked myself into getting in gear and heading down the road.  I went to the O'Brien No.1 site again; this is where I'd been watching some decent locations for late summer prairie blooms.

 

When I arrived it was so thick I decided to just walk to the ridges above the Little Sioux River, figuring I could scout some along the way.  There's a hanging valley there...I'm sure I've talked of it in the past.  The farmers who access fields down below the prairie there use it as an access road...its actually an ancient river bed left hanging along the edge of the hillside.

 

No sooner had I reached the ridge top the sun popped out of the fog and the curtains down below me were opening to expose the river below.  I scrambled and got a few shots before the river and valley below were gone again...if I'd been a couple minutes or more later I would have simply missed out!  It was truly a "WOW" moment! Serendipity?

 

I walked around checking for late summer liatris but the majority were still in tight bud...some years you get lucky and they all go at once - that would be nice!  But no such luck this morning. 

 

 "O'Brien No. 1 Sunflowers and Big Bluestem"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view)

 

I kind of did a mental inventory of plants as I slowly walked back to the road and did see some surprises; for one there was still Spiked Lobelia (Lobelia spicata) in bloom!  That's nearly always done by early August in my own pasture, and this year I couldn't find it; I suspected because of the drought we'd been experiencing again.

 

The Sunflowers were way ahead of our pasture here as well, but the stand I stopped to photograph is in a low lying wet area so that may be the reason.  I was seeing three varieties, may even have missed one.  there was Maximilian (Helianthus maximiliani), Sawtooth (Helianthus grosseserratus) and Showy Sunflower (Helianthus laetiflorus) in bloom intermixed with some good clumps of Big Bluestem (Andropogon gerardii) also in bloom!

 

A good morning for a wet walk, ya the air was 100% humidity - even my glasses kept fogging over trying to look through the camera's viewfinder.  But a beautiful morning on the prairie!

 

 

Still August...Still Hanging In There!

"Sunrise at O'Brien No.1"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view) 

Its surprising how quickly this summer is flying by...but August has been different in some ways.  Kind of like slow motion, yet at the speed of "life" if-you-will.  We've had events of great joy, some not and some yet to happen, it makes for a suppressed level of creativity...I talked sparingly about this in my last blog.  But I have been tending to business and yesterday morning (Saturday) I kicked myself out of bed early and drove down to a spot I hadn't visited for some time.  The sunrise wasn't overly spectacular but very pleasant; a quiet/still dew laden morning with low lying fog in the valley below.  I have talked about this area on occasion in the past; it is part of the Waterman Prairie complex but I refer to it as O'Brien No.1 because the person who first identified it as a prairie of importance gave it that identification in her report.  

Ada Hayden was the first woman botanist at Iowa State University, she has been credited with publishing the best native flora survey of any part of Iowa. And she campaigned for a system of prairie preserves, two of which were later named the Hayden and the Kalsow prairies.  

"Wild Rose hips from O'Brien No.1"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view)

Hayden received a grant one summer in the early 1940's to travel the state, make a census of remaining tallgrass prairies and make recommendations for preservation.  O'Brien No.1 was her identification for this site and she recommended its preservation to the state.  It took a while but in the mid 1990's the location was finally purchased by the state as part of the Waterman Prairie complex.  Ada is one of my heroes (OK "heroines") of our nearly vanished Tallgrass Prairie...I have several but she is definitely a kindred spirit at the top of the list.

 "Early Light on Dog Creek"

photograph - © Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view)

Its getting into the later part of August and the landscape and plants are showing the signs...I'm beginning to see swelling flower buds of Liatris aspera, the Solidago sp., and the color of wild rose hips are taking on a bright red hue...the warm season grasses are in flower or finishing up.  There is even a hint of yellow in the Cottonwood leaves along the creeks and streams in the valley.

Here at the studio we are seeing more hummingbirds than just our resident nesting pair, the Red-headed Woodpecker's off-springs are sporting their strange black heads, and we're overrun with the fresh crop of youngster Orchard and Baltimore Orioles.  

The dawn chorus had changed permanently till fall; I do not like that.  I already miss the overlapping cacophony of bird song beginning at predawn.  I still catch the Song Sparrows, Sedge Wrens and Dickcissels in the early morning walks or evening respite, but its a sign of change from a season that is just too short even more so at this age...you youg'uns will understand clearly someday.

The other change I led into in the last blog has not changed.  The transmission line process will be a long one, it will shadow us for at least the next couple years.  I will speak more on it after the required "public meeting" next week.  Until then - savor each moment left of summer!

Summer Days

"Dawn in the Valley"

© Bruce A. Morrison

(click on image for a larger view) 

This is a repost from my "A Tallgrass Journal" blog this morning.  Frequently my activities take me through the same avenues in my art work as well as in my interest of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem. I've been spending these days exploring prairie remnants, but still along the little creek that flows past our home in the valley.  The tallgrass is entering summer now and there is no holding it back!

One pleasant personal observation this year has been the larger than remembered vocal presence of Dickcissels.  They are even calling from the fences bordering our own yard!  Now this is likely a good opportunity to get more photos of this grassland favorite...but Murphy's Law steps in with cases like this.  If you go out and dig thistle or mow, or pull brome - they sing praises to you!  If you even carry something "looking like" a camera - they leave for the neighbor's pasture!  Little buggers!  But it's nice to hear and see so many here this summer; would be nice if they were actually rebounding a little.  

I'm embedding a very short video here of a male Dickcissel singing from a pasture fence post...many people don't realize what a pretty little bird this is (or don't even recognize what kind of bird it is!)...although the video isn't a "close-up" of the bird, it will give you an idea of how it looks. For a better look at a Dickcissel, you can view a closer shot in a past post in this blog - Here.  If you subscribe to this blog via e-mail the link for the video feed is - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwuepAhj36E.  (That link would also allow full screen viewing.)

Enjoy the birds on the prairie this summer!