Crow World, Hawk World

A trail cam allowed us to see crow behavior up close as the crows gathered to feed on the carcass of a deer.

Some of the crows with larger bills big-belly around--but they make themselves scarce when the hawk arrives!

Mice Run In, Mice Run Out

After filling our freezers with venison, our hunter-friends left deer carcasses where scavengers could get to them.  

We expected hawks and crows.

We didn't expect mice! 

The mice puzzle me.  They spend so much time running around.  What is the point of all that energy-expenditure?

What are they up to?

I am reminded of the gross humor of my childhood, as we kids started on the long journey of coming to grips with mortality.  We'd hoot at each other:  You'll be in a grave!    Then we'd all join in, chanting:
The worms crawl in
The worms crawl out
The worms play pinochle
On your snout...
Over sixty years later, I still don't have mortality figured out.  
But these mice seem perfectly willing to play pinochle!
However, they seem that way to me because I have so much to learn about mice.  I asked Mammalogist Drew Ricketts at KSU to help me understand what we see in this clip.  He replied:  

Mice have pretty high metabolisms relative to ours, and they also have small stomachs, so they spend a lot of time zipping from place to place in search of something to eat.  Mice also have to move relatively quickly when they are in the open, so that they can try to avoid becoming a snack for a predator.  A slow, lingering mouse would quickly become a dead mouse.  They also could be grabbing a bite so quickly that it is hard to see in the video.  Animals also tend to check on large resources, because they are important to them.  Finally, carcasses attract predators and would be a dangerous place for a mouse to be.  It is possible that the mice smell evidence of predators that have visited the carcasses, and have a hard time feeling comfortable.

Some mice are very omnivorous, and some mice have very specific diets.  The mice in the video are white-footed mice, and they eat a lot of different things.  They probably don’t spend a lot of time looking for carrion, but, when it is placed in their home range, it is probably a resource that they can’t resist.  

---------------------------------

Thank you, Drew!  Experts who are willing to share their expertise with us lay people are the best!!!  You help open doors that would otherwise remain closed to us.  

Troy & Mr. 8

Troy and Mr. 8 like the same trail.  Will they cross paths?

Hawks Give Wings to Deer

Our hunter-friends filled our freezer with venison and then left the deer carcasses in the Road Field where the scavengers could get to them.  

Our trail cam caught these two hawks feeding on the deer.  The first one (the smaller of the two) is a Rough-legged Hawk (feathers down to the toes).  The second one is considerably larger.  At first I thought she might be a female Rough-legged Hawk, but then I noticed how her feathers stop above her wrists.  And her bill is so large!    So I went to an expert.  He told me that the first hawk is indeed a Rough-legged, but that the second one is more likely an immature dark-morph Red-tailed Hawk.   

Check out that kick she delivers at the end of the clip!  What's that all about?

Many thanks to the Bur Oaks for producing fat acorns this year so that the deer could be numerous and well fed.    And endless thanks to these three deer who gave their wild lives to nourish  hawks and other wildlife and provide food for us.   We owe a debt of gratitude to the Bur Oak Family and the Tribe of Deer!

Hawk on Driveway

A Cooper's Hawk?

Restoring Bottomland Prairie: Motherwort, March 2017

Motherwort volunteered in the riparian buffer, greening up in early spring.  

Introduced from Asia, Motherwort is apparently invasive in eastern woodlands.  It does not appear to be so here, as it has reappeared in the same spot on the creek bank, year after year, without expanding its reach.   So far, it has simply added to our biodiversity!

Motherwort
Leonurus cardiaca
Mint Family (Lamiaceae)
Perennial
Native of Asia, Volunteer
A traditional medicinal plant in Europe and Asia,
now naturalized along Great Plains streams
and rivers, Motherwort was used to treat
heart ailments, rabies, and lassitude (!).

You can see its rectangular stems, proclaiming its membership in the mint family.  

As summer arrives, Motherwort is overtopped by other plants along the creek bank.   I forget to look for it, so I have yet to catch it blooming.

But this may be the year!  

Restoring Bottomland Prairie: Winter Annuals Volunteer

Wedge-leaf Draba
Draba cunefolia
Mustard Family
Annual or winter annual
Native volunteer

These four species of winter annuals--two native, two introduced--blossomed in April 2017 on the riparian buffer bordering the Creek Field.  All four were volunteers!

Corn Gromwell
Buglossoides arvensis (Lithospermum arvense)

Borage Family (Boraginaceae)

Winter Annual

Introduced from Eurasia, Volunteer

Slender Fumewort
Corydalis micrantha
Fumewort Family
Winter annual, native volunteer

I found a fly busily drinking nectar from Treacle Mustard (the fly is visible in the photo below).   The fly doesn't seem to object to the mustard's non-native status!  

Treacle Mustard

Erysimum repandum

Winter Annual

Mustard Family (Brassicaceae)

Introduced from Eurasia, Volunteer

Restoring Bottomland Prairie: Pollinators on Flowering Shrubs, March-April 2017

In 1999, we put in a riparian buffer along McDowell Creek.  We planted over a thousand bare-root seedlings that were part of the "wildlife bundle" we purchased from KSU's Forestry Department.   The flowering shrubs featured below--American Plums, Fragrant Sumac, and Chokecherries--were in that bundle.  But the same species also volunteer along the creek.  Over time the two groups have merged with each other as the banks and channels have changed and both creek and bottomground have rewritten themselves.

This year it came home to me how important these early-blooming shrubs are to pollinators.   What did the bottomground look like pre-settlement?  I don't know, but today these shrubs are an essential early-spring sweet spot for butterflies, flies, and bees.

Right at the Equinox the wild plums bloomed.  They sent the most delicate fragrance out onto the breeze--and the pollinators responded by moving toward them.  

They weren't the only ones! I pulled a lawn chair into a thicket and just sat for a few moments.  The blossoms were alive with Red Admiral butterflies, feral Honey Bees, and flies.  

The video above shows some of what I saw.  How I wish it could convey what I heard, and felt, and smelled as well--the rustling, the breeze, the fragrances, the fresh spring air...

Here Fragrant Sumac (Rhus aromatica) appears
to be blooming with butterflies as well
as flowers.

A month later, the Fragrant Sumac bloomed.   So many butterflies!  The shrubs seemed to be blooming with butterflies, as well as with flowers.


The luscious yellow blossoms were covered with butterflies, as shown in the video below.  Most of the butterflies were Painted Ladies (Vanessa cardui) and American Ladies (Vanessa virginiensis), though two beautiful Common Buckeyes (Junonia coenia) also made an appearance, as well as an Eastern Tailed Blue.  

An Eastern Tailed Blue nectars
on Fragrant Sumac.

A Mining Bee (Genus Andrena, Family Andrenidae)
enjoys the nectar-rich blossoms of Fragrant Sumac (Rhus aromatica)

Also appearing was a species of bee new to Bird Runner, or at least to my observations on Bird Runner.  It was a Mining Bee (genus Andrena).  Bees in the family Andrenidae nectar on early-blooming shrubs and gather pollen to provision their nests.  True to their name, they burrow in the ground, creating as many as 8 cells per burrow, with a pollen ball in each cell.  That's where they lay their eggs--one egg on each ball.   The newly hatched larvae eat the pollen until it's time to pupate.

A female Mining Bee gathers pollen to
provision her nest.

The Chokecherries bloomed at the same time as the Fragrant Sumac.  In the video below a Question Mark butterfly appears first, followed by a Painted Lady, then the Question Mark again, followed by an American Lady.  The final scene shows an American Lady in the foreground with a Question Mark in the background.  

Flowering shrubs, you are amazing!   Where do you stop and the insects around you begin?   You have roots, leaves, stems, branches, and flowers, but you also have all around you an aura of fluttering, special markings, and color.


All photos and videos by Margy Stewart.

The Monarchs Are Early. Where Are the Milkweeds?

Monarch butterflies hopped a strong south wind and arrived on McDowell Creek on April 8--a good month earlier than usual.  

There was plenty for them to eat--both the wild plums and the lilacs were blooming profusely--but where would they lay their eggs?  

The milkweeds weren't up yet.

The Monarchs floated here and there, just above the mustards and mints that were already leafing out--and it broke my heart to think that they were looking for milkweeds they would not find.

Still, the butterflies avoided the burns and replenished their energy with nectar.   I blessed the plums and lilacs and yes, the dandelions, that were keeping them alive.

Then on April 12, I saw milkweed noses poking through the soil.

Just in time!

The milkweeds were in an area where I had worked hard to remove the Crown Vetch.  If ever there was a reward for all that labor, this was it.  If ever there was an incentive to continue removing invasive, non-native monocultures to make room for native plants, this was it!  

The milkweeds grew quickly, and soon I found little white spheres on the milkweeds' green leaves.  

These little white balls are the eggs of
Monarch butterflies.  

Within just a few days, the eggs became tiny caterpillars......with a healthy appetite!

They need to grow quickly, because the milkweeds are home to spiders, too--and little caterpillars can make a nice meal for a spider.   Invertebrates don't seem to mind the toxic steroids called cardenolides which the Monarchs absorb from milkweeds.     Birds and rodents have learned to avoid the bitter-tasting Monarchs. But invertebrates such as spiders either have a different palate or a shorter memory.  

I photographed these two spiders on the same milkweed plants where I found the caterpillars.  Some caterpillar-molecules will become spider-molecules.    

I pray with my heart that enough caterpillars will survive to found dynasties of butterflies!   

I will pray with my hands and time and energy by working hard to create and maintain habitat for native plants, including milkweeds.    

Burning the West Side: April 11, 2017

There was so much fuel, the burn seemed dangerous.  But the ground was wet, the guys were experts, and all went well.

That's a Monarch butterfly zigzagging in front of the cedars at the beginning of the video.  The powerful south wind on Saturday, April 8, 2017 blew the Monarchs into Kansas way ahead of schedule.

The milkweeds aren't up yet!  Monarchs need milkweeds to lay their eggs.

But the wild plums are blooming, and so are the lilacs planted by prairie ladies many years ago.   

While waiting for the milkweeds, the Monarchs have nectar to drink!  And they are no dummies around fire.  They zigged and zagged and stayed just out of reach of the flames.   Literally, when the fire went low, they went high.   

Hey, little guys--we wish you well.  We hope soon to meet your descendants!

  

Burning the East Side, April 8, 2017

Rod Moyer and his excellent crew did some backburns to protect the house.  I appreciated the time they took, as they had thousands of acres to burn that day.

After they left, I burned around the Writer's Shack and the solar panel at Jerry's Pond.

The fire crossed onto our land from neighboring pastures.

From Cemetery Ridge the fire jumped to our woods.  In one place it jumped the Oak Road, both tracks of which were running water--and it jumped downhill and against a southwest wind. 
Fire makes up rules as it goes along!

Fire maintains a grassland--without it there would be no prairie--but fire is capricious.  It is helpful but in no way does it confine itself to the helper role.

The woods provide back-access to the house, so I spent most of the day burning the woods near the house--depriving the fire of fuel for a surprise attack.

Everything went smoothly because the ground was wet.  Burning in the woods meant crawling under fences and fighting through brush--it's not an easy place to move with water tanks.  But I was able to drag my flapper around and through tight spots.  With the flapper, I could push the flames down into the damp earth where the moisture put them out.   Why did I need a water tank?  The earth was waiting for me with all the water I needed.

Some of the final clips--with the narration--are video-cards I sent to Ron, who was back east with his family.   Ron recognized immediately other things on the sound track--but I want to draw others' attention to the songs of meadowlarks setting up territories and the Western Chorus Frogs calling from the pond.   While the fire consumes the prairie, small lives on the edges go on!  And overhead, the vultures circle.  They are like the burn itself--ready to turn death into new life.

I forgot all about the trail cam!  It was positioned at the Oak Road overlook, facing northeast.  It thus caught the fire coming down from Cemetery Ridge and moving west.  Luckily (it certainly was nothing I did!), the fire stopped just before the camera.  It remains in good shape!

Restoring Bottomland Prairie: Planting the Road Field! March 19-22, 2017

Al is the best!  

It was a windy day when he planted the Road Field for us.   

Given the hardened furrows, planting had to be done north-south.  Every return trip meant a gale-force wind in his face, with a barrage of debris.  

But he persisted until the entire field was planted with 11 species of native forbs and 1 native grass.  

Al used his special native-seed drills so the seeds wouldn't be pushed too far down.  

Ron rakes in some native seed.  Deci stands by, ready

to help.  March 22, 2017

For the next several days, Ron and I planted some species by hand, raking the surface, then stamping the seeds into good contact with the soil.

The seed of wild licorice (Glycyrrhiza lepidota),
planted March 22, 2017.  The seeds were
hand-collected by Iralee Barnard.

Here's a wild licorice seed pressed into the ground.  

Licorice seeds were hand-collected by Iralee Barnard.







The 30-acre Road Field has been in crops for 150 years.  

That was a long time to be constricted by humans and their insistence that fields should not be anything but monocultures of annual crops.  

Last year the Road Field was allowed to go fallow, and so it began its journey back toward self-expression.    We gave it a headstart with the seeds of native species that could well have lived in the bottomground before the settlers came. 

As we did with the Creek Field, we used a forbs-first strategy.  Because grasses can push out forbs in restorations, we want the forbs to get established before native grasses come in.  We made one exception for Eastern Gamagrass, as a concession to the need to have at least a small grass-defense against weeds--and also a concession to the sheer beauty and magnificence of Eastern Gamagrass.   

This is what we planted on March 19-22, 2017:

Bee Balm  Monarda fistulosa
Black Eyed Susan  Rudbekia hirta
Canada Milkvetch  Astragalus canadensis
Compass Plant Silphium laciniatum
Eastern Gamagrass  Tripsacum dactyloides
False Sunflower  Heliopsis helianthoides
Foxglove Penstemon Penstemon digitalis
Golden Alexanders Zizia aurea
Indian Blanket  Gaillardia pulchella
Plains Coreopsis  Coreopsis tinctoria
Purple Coneflower  Echinacea purpurea
Wild Licorice Glycyrrhiza lepidota

But if our experience with the Creek Field is any indicator, many other species will volunteer.   


Who knows what will grow and prosper?  Who knows what the Road Field will make of itself?

Burning the Bottomground: Feb. 21, 2017

  We burned the Creek Field and the Road Field on Feb. 21, 2017.   
     Al and Jeff took charge and did an expert job, as always.





 Before the smoke had cleared, hawks and eagles lined the field.  

These carnivorous birds have stayed around or revisited every day for the two weeks following the burn.   Here are some of the raptors that came to dine:

Birds aren't the only predators that visited:

A coyote is cousin to smoke itself.

Attracting the raptors and the coyotes were the rodents that are normally hidden in the thatch. 

Here is a clip of some of the rodent runs which the burn laid bare:

The superb mammologist Drew Ricketts tells me that golf-ball sized holes are made by voles; bigger ones are made by cotton rats.  
Runs smaller than 2" wide are vole-runs; bigger runs are made by cotton rats.

Songbirds also find the newly burned field a wonderful smorgasbord!  Here are some of the little birds that did some serious eating:

Right after the burn, seeds and insects were unusually accessible.

I had been so worried that a February burn would be hard on birds.  So many winter residents spend the cold nights in the bottomground thatch.  But the cool burn left lots of thatch.  And as the clips above show, the burned fields turned into giant bird feeders, and a coyote feeder, too.  

Fire--and then feast.

Creek Field Animal Homes

Yesterday I asked if anyone could help me identify the residents of the animal homes shown in the video, all located in the wooded areas between the Creek Field and McDowell Creek.  Also, I wanted to know about the little white circles scattered just outside a hollow tree.  Animal?  Vegetable? Mineral?

Today I was thrilled to receive an answer from one of the most knowledgeable mammalogists in Kansas.   KSU's Andrew Ricketts wrote as follows:

The first animal home (the hollow tree) in your video has a lot going on, and, likely, a long history.  The secret is the little white circles, which are the pits from hackberry fruits.  Many animals eat hackberry fruits, but most only digest the outer part of the fruit, and then pass the little white pits in their feces.  Raccoons often consume the fruits in very large quantities in the winter.  They also defecate repeatedly at latrine sites to mark their territories.  This results in a buildup of many hackberry pits in a small location (often at the base of a den tree that has a hollow area large enough for a raccoon to enter).  Mice, usually white-footed mice around here, are able to bite through the hard shell that forms the pit of the hackberry fruit, which allows them to eat the seed that is contained within the pit.  They will eat fruits and seeds that are scattered on the ground, but will also mine seeds from raccoon latrines because they are large deposits of easily accessible food.  The little white circles are hackberry pits that mice have opened in order to eat the seed.  From what I can see in the video, I think that white-footed mice have lived in the hollow portion of the tree and have been depositing seed remains in there for a very long time.  Recently, the wood near the ground in the hollow part of the tree has become rotten enough that a larger animal (probably a raccoon or a skunk) was able to dig into the hollow area, in order to get inside and use it for a den.  The red substrate is rotten wood that the larger animal scattered as they were opening the hollow, and the seed remains came along with it.

As for the hollow log on the ground, it looks like either a mouse or an eastern woodrat (aka packrat), or both are living in there.  If it is a mouse home, they would likely be white-footed mice, given that it is located in a wooded area.

It is hard to be sure about the holes in the ground near the pocket gopher mounds that are featured near the end of the video.  As I hinted at, the mounds of dirt are from pocket gophers cleaning out their burrow system that is below ground.  They almost never leave holes in the ground that would allow a predator, such as a snake, easy access to the burrow system, though.  In my work with small mammals at Konza, I regularly observed deer mice, prairie voles, and cotton rats escaping into similar holes that they had made, which gave them access to the pocket gopher tunnels.  So, my best guess is that similar species of rodents have made the holes near the pocket gopher burrow system, to make their home.

Please let me know if you have any questions.  I think it is really neat that you are sharing so much natural history from your property with others.
---------------------------

Thank you so much for this information, Drew.  You're the best!
I am so grateful for your expertise and your kind & generous willingness to share it.
All best,
Margy

Big Bluestem Rapid Responders Visit Senators' Offices: No to Jeff Sessions!

Betsy Roe delivers statements
opposing Jeff Sessions  to the Topeka office 
of Senator Pat Roberts.
(The statement from the group follows 
Carl Reed's letter below).

The Big Blue-stem Rapid Responders are a group of 38 Kansans from 7 zip codes who have banded together to speak up for human rights in response to the election of Donald Trump.





On Jan. 24, they visited the offices of Kansas senators to urge that the senators vote No on the nomination of Jeff Sessions.

Carl Reed delivers his letter to the Manhattan office of
Senator Jerry Moran
(Letter below)

CARL REED'S LETTER

January 23, 2017

Senator Moran:

You have an opportunity to show integrity and honesty. You do not have to be swept up in the wave of bigotry and anti-democracy that is the Trump agenda. The men and women who founded Kansas stood against Jeff Davis and would have stood just as strongly against Jeff Sessions. You do not have to continue to produce a voting record identical to senators from the states that blocked Kansas from the union. You can make us proud!

I am sure you are familiar with the letter that President Abraham Lincoln sent to a friend in Springfield, Illinois in March of 1865.

“As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless.”

Within a month the president was killed. His prayer, however, was answered for one hundred and fifty-one years. Then, on November 8, 2016, Lincoln’s fears were realized. On January 20, 2017, the United States government passed from a government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” to a government of the rich and white for the rich and white. President grab’embythepussy has selected Jeff Sessions to enforce that change. Refuse to be a party to the destruction of your democracy.

Carl Reed

1418 Leavenworth

Manhattan, Kansas

STATEMENT OF THE 
BIG BLUESTEM RAPID RESPONDERS

January 24, 2017

Dear Senator Roberts:

Please protect ALL Kansans—vote NO on Jeff Sessions!  

There is so much evidence of Mr. Session’s bias! 

But today we would like to present to you just two documents: 

1)      A letter from Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., opposing Jeff Sessions’ confirmation to the federal bench in 1986; and

2)      A letter from Judy Shepard, mother of Matthew Shepard, beaten to death in Laramie, Wyoming by anti-gay attackers, opposing Jeff Sessions’ confirmation now. 

Mrs. King writes,  “Anyone who has used the power of his office as United States Attorney to intimidate and chill the free exercise of the ballot by citizens should not be elevated to our courts.”   She is referring to Session’s prosecutions of black organizers in Alabama, during which rural African-American first-time voters were repeatedly interrogated, threatened, and harassed.  (For more, see Lift Every Voice and Sing, pp. 183-219.)  She goes on,  “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters.”   She concludes that in trying to suppress the black vote, Sessions attempted to achieve “with a federal prosecution what the local sheriffs accomplished twenty years ago with clubs and cattle prods.”  We could add, with truth, that suppressing the black vote is what the KKK did for 100 years with beatings, torture, and murder.

We Kansans do not want our senator to elevate a practitioner of racist voter suppression to be attorney general!

Mrs. Shepard writes that Republicans and Democrats came together to pass the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, but that Senator Sessions was not among them.  Instead, she writes, “Senator Sessions strongly opposed the hate crimes bill—characterizing hate crimes as mere “thought crimes.”   “My son was not killed by ‘thoughts’ or because his murderers said hateful things,” she says.  “My son was brutally beaten with the butt of a .357 magnum pistol, tied to a fence, and left to die in freezing temperatures because he was gay.”  She concludes, “Senator Sessions’ very public record of hostility towards the LGBTQ community and federal legislation designed to protect vulnerable Americans, including the Voting Rights Act [and the Violence against Women Act], makes it nearly impossible to believe that he will vigorously enforce statutes and ideas that he worked so hard to defeat.”

We Kansans do not want our senator to elevate to the position of chief law enforcement officer of the US someone who is hostile to the  LGBTQ community and unwilling to protect vulnerable Americans.       

We are a group of 38 Kansans from 7 different zip codes.    

We expect our senator to protect ALL Kansans.   We expect you to refuse to vote for someone who would make some Kansans more vulnerable and leave them without the equal protection of the law.

Please let us know one way or the other whether or not you can fulfill our expectations. 

Thank you for your consideration!

Big Bluestem Rapid Responders

Margy Stewart, Coordinator

11003 Lower McDowell Rd.

Junction City, Kansas  66441

785.539.5592

Margystewart785@gmail.com

Deci, Mac, Betsy, & Margy on the Beaver Dam: New Year's Eve, 2016!

Can this be only 2 weeks+ in the past?

On New Year's Eve Day, Betsy and I took our dogs and went hiking along McDowell Creek.

We found a beaver dam that had been constructed around a chunk of earth that had broken loose from the bank and somehow migrated to the middle of the creek.     The beavers then connected it to both banks with sticks and rocks.

Betsy and I walked on those sticks and rocks, teetering precariously, until we reached that chunk of earth.  There we sat in the sun and listened to the creek ripple as it broke through tiny breaks in the dam on either side of us.   Little Mac sat between Betsy's feet and looked at everything wide-eyed.  Deci was sure we were in Fun Land.   So many sticks! and so close together!  And right by the creek!!  

We delighted in Deci's delight!   

Sitting by a splashing creek in the sun is akin to sitting by a camp fire in the dark.  You can't help but speculate and wonder and probe the mysteries all around.

Our thoughts and talk flowed just like the creek.

Happy, happy new year, everyone!