Northern Broken-Dash Skipper in the Creek Field

 Here on July 26, 2021 was a new visitor to the Creek Field: A Northern Broken-Dash Skipper (Wallengrenia egeremet).   
                                                           

 She landed first on Bee Balm.

Then she hopped over to Echinacea.

Broken Dashes are Grass Skippers, with grasses as their food plants.  

It is gratifying to find Grass Skippers in a prairie restoration!

Frog Males "Dance" Together

Puzzling to many is the behavior of male Blanchard's Cricket Frogs!   They often seek each other out, two by two, for a "partner dance" involving leg displays and tumbling.  

Here are two little males I encountered yesterday along McDowell Creek:   

Only males do these leg displays, according to herpetologist Eva Horne.  

Females lay eggs in water, and the males fertilize the eggs externally--so what these male-male interactions have to do with reproduction is not clear.   

At the end of the video, one of the "dancers" goes off to start chorusing.  You can see his inflated vocal sac is almost as big as he is!  

Beloved herpetologist Joe Collins wrote that Cricket Frog "breeding choruses" may be misnamed, as they do not indicate that eggs have been or will be laid.  They may serve some "unknown purpose," he wrote.   

The interactions shown here appear more friendly and cooperative than aggressive and competitive.   These two youngsters play well, politely taking turns jumping on top of each other!  

Two-spotted Bumble Bee on Foxglove Penstemon

 Every prairie restoration goes through a "Penstemon digitalis phase," I am told--a time when Foxglove Penstemon seems predominant.   Our Creek Field is coming down off that phase, but there is still plenty of Foxglove blooming heartily.   This year the flowers were covered by diminutive bumble bees--a kind I had never seen before, or at least never noticed.   It was so hard to get a still photo, as the small bees were either deep inside the tubular flowers or moving hectically from flower to flower.   Finally, I had enough photos to submit to bugguide.net and got an ID:  Bombus bimaculatus, Two-spotted Bumble Bee.  Apparently, the identifying field-characteristics are small size, long face, and the second abdominal segment, where the yellow hairs stop before reaching the sides, leaving two black "corners."   I include freeze-frames in the following video showing one of the corners.    

B. bimaculatus has an unusually long tongue, especially designed for tubular flowers such as those of Foxglove Penstemon.  

Pollinators Extraordinaire: Green Metallic Sweat Bees

Over the years, small, shiny green bees nectaring on wildflowers in our prairie restorations have been identified for us by bugguide.net as two different kinds of Sweat Bees.  The first is a genus of "Striped Sweat Bees," genus Agapostemon, shown here on Wavy-leaf Thistle, in our Road Field.  Wavy-leaf (Cirsium undulatum) is a magnificent native pollinator-plant: 
 

The second is a different group of metallic-green Sweat Bees, classified as tribe "Augochlorini."   Here are some Augochlorine Sweat Bees on Grey-headed Coneflower, in our Creek Field:

Now after all these years I am finally putting two-and-two together!   Both kinds of shiny green Sweat Bee are members of the bee family Halictidae, and both are wonderful pollinators!   

 

Shift Change: Winter, Summer, and Year-round Birds

There are a few days in spring when birds overlap--the winter residents are still here, summer residents arrive, migrants from the south pass through, and everybody joins the year-round birds! That's what's shown here: The Harris Sparrows and White-crowned Sparrows are still splashing in the creek, getting ready to head north, while the year-round Song Sparrow also has a bath The year-round cardinal and goldfinch are sprucing up for the breeding season, practicing their songs, while a Dickcissel, newly arrived for the summer, enjoys the creek. You can hear him singing while another new arrival, a Blue Grosbeak, checks out his summer digs. That Indigo Bunting looks as if he needs to rest before setting up a territory, while the Parula Warbler is just passing through The Carolina Wren, a year-round resident, already has nestlings in a hole in the creek bank, but one of them has fallen out. Don't worry--Mom and Dad are still on the job. Meanwhile, the earliest summer bird to arrive in the spring--the Eastern Phoebe--already has nestlings underway

Orange-throated Darters on McDowell Creek

Orange-throated Darters on McDowell Creek, engaged in a communal spawn:

(Many thanks to Keith Gido, KSU fish expert, for explaining what the video shows!)

Here is a closeup of one of those tiny fish:   

And here is one of the males, all decked out for breeding season:

Many thanks to Pat Silovsky for showing us how to
photograph one of these elusive fish!  

The narrow plate-glass aquarium allowed
us to temporarily detain this handsome male long
enough to photograph him.  But it did not allow 
him to show his usual pose, which is hidden under 
debris on the bottom!

It's not easy to get a good look at a Darter.   

In fact, for years I didn't see them clearly enough to know if they were fish at all.  

I would see them scuttling across the bottom and diving under debris, where they hid from view.    I would catch the briefest glimpse of a dinosaur-looking head and proto-legs just behind it, sticking out to the side.   

What were they?  Tadpoles?  Lizards?  Some sort of larvae?  

Finally, I saw one in the open long enough to see the fins.  What had looked like proto-legs were actually fins stuck off to the side to keep the Darter close to the bottom:  

Nature educator Pat Silovsky explains more about Darters:

Director of Milford Nature Center

and stream ecologist

Dr. Pat Silovsky visited McDowell Creek on March 19, 2021.    

Orange-throated Darters are bottom-scuttlers--but they are also beautiful fish.

--Post by Margy Stewart, Prairie Heritage, Inc.  

All photos and videos are from McDowell Creek, Bird Runner Wildlife Refuge, Geary County, Kansas.

All's Right with the World...

   

...when Guests find Hosts!    

Clouded Crimson Moth caterpillars need plants in the Primrose family.

Here is a member of that family, growing in a road ditch. 

Gaura mollis, aka Velvetweed, is
a native annual/biennial that can grow
over six feet tall.

And here is its little "guest!"  

A Clouded Crimson caterpillar
munches on its host plant,
Gaura mollis.

A Clouded Crimson growing larger on Gaura mollis

Buckwheats host Cobra Inchworms:  

Climbing Buckwheat (Fallopia scandens)
hosting a Cobra Inchworm (Timandra
amaturaria) 
August 21, 2020.  Bird Runner 
Wildlife Refuge.

  Paracantha fruit flies need thistles.   

Female fruit fly, Paracantha sp.
on Tall Thistle (Cirsium altissimum)
Bird Runner Wildlife Refuge
August 16, 2020.  

 Female Paracantha preparing to lay eggs on Tall Thistle.

Dogbane moths look for--guess what--Dogbane!  

Cycnia tenera--the Dogbane Tiger Moth--
enjoying his host plant, Indian Hemp
Dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum)

Not all guests are well mannered.   The caterpillars of Saucrobotys futilalis, the Dogbane Saucrobotys, can eat their host out of house and home:

Dogbane Saucrobotys Moth caterpillars
on Indian Hemp Dogbane,  stripping
the leaves off the plant, August 4, 2020
Bird Runner Wildlife Refuge

And of course famously, Monarch caterpillars need milkweed:

Monarch larva on Common Milkweed
June 9, 2020.  Bird Runner Wildlife Refuge

Many insects are generalists and can live off of numerous species of plants.   But some are specialists, like the ones above.   If their host plants disappear, so do they.   And if insects disappear, so do birds, flowers, fruits, vegetables, and eventually--us.  Therefore, it's a special thrill to see  insects finding the plants they need.   It means in some ways anyway, all's right with the world!   

All can share in this thrill!  Just plant native plants.  Whether it's milkweed in a window box four stories up, a 1/8 acre plot at a church or school, or thousands of acres of former cropground next to a national park, it will all help to set the world to rights!