I told a bit of my Prairie Ramble story in the Prairie Sunflowers post a few days ago. It was my last field trip at the Potholes and Prairies Birding Festival, and was quite different. The mission of the Arrowwood, Chase Lake and Horsehead trips was to find as many birds as we could see in the day, 60 of us, moving rapidly from stop to stop on a big tour bus and spending from 30 to 60 minutes at each stop. On the Prairie Ramble a much smaller group set out to enjoy a relatively small area of unbroken short grass prairie by walking it for several hours. I told a bit of the history of the section we walked in the previous post. You might want to click the link above and review. And on the Prairie Ramble we were just as interested, perhaps more interested, in the plants (bugs, reptiles, etc.) we might find there as we were in the birds. Very different. As befits the adventure, this is going to be a long rambling post with lots of stops and close looks. Find a few moments to enjoy it. 🙂

The lead shot here shows the terrain we walked to good advantage, and Ann Hoffert (who has been the primary force behind Potholes and Prairies for all 10 years of its existence) and Freddie (a film maker from the UK, here doing a trailer for possible National Geographic Channel show on birding) provide the human scale. There is even a prairie pothole there on the right. The potholes are semi-permanent or seasonal wetlands that from in low areas of the prairie and provide habitat for hundreds of thousands of migrating and nesting waterfowl, and millions of nesting song-birds. And I may actually be underestimating the numbers by a factor of factor of 10.

When we got to Prairie it was still misting after a night of heavy rain, and everything was soaked. At the same time the front was passing off ahead of a stiff wind from the west. It was not ideal conditions for walking the hills or for photographing the small prairie plants, and those of without boots were soon wet to the knee. :)The next two shots are Prairie Smoke, one of the classic wildflowers of the short grass, and a very unique and interesting plant.

Rich Bohn, a native of the North Dakota prairie who works with one of the agencies attempting to preserve as much of this habitat as possible, had walked this section a few days before and was able to lead us directly to many of the most interesting prairie plants and grasses.

The wind was blowing so hard that in order to get sharp close-ups of some of the taller flowers, like the Deathcamas in the 4th image, I had to resort to stilling the flower with my hand. Deathcamas is, as its name implies, deadly poison to both humans and livestock.

As we wandered the prairie, seeing what was to be seen, we found small caterpillars on the rocks. Lots of small caterpillars! Julie Zickerfoose, well known naturalist and writer (her most recent book The Blue Bird Effect was featured on Oprah recently), was with us, and got down to examine the bugs more closely.

She eventually convinced us that the caterpillars were actually eating the lichen on the rocks. Unlikely as that sounds, a little research, first on my smartphone and then on my tablet when we got back to the bus, determined that there is indeed a Lichen Moth (2 actually) that lives on the prairies of North Dakota. It later turned out that Rich Bohn, unknowingly, had a photograph of the moth itself on one of the plants he had photographed in this section a few years before. You see both the caterpillar and its pellet-like droppings in the image.

There were a few other bugs of note. We found a morning stilled Dot-Tailed Whiteface dragonfly and some Marsh or Boreal Bluet damselflies. The dragonfly was so cold and wet I was able to pick it up so the whole group got an excellent look at it. I put it back down before my hand could warm it enough to get in motions while the air was still too cold.

At the other end of the spectrum from caterpillars perhaps, we found several of the tiny Prairie Rose plants in bloom. This is a wild rose (rosa pratincola) and a close relative of the eastern wood rose (rosa woodsii), but it only grows inches tall (at least on the short grass prairie of North Dakota). There are few things more delicate in this life than a wild rose.

Over the brow of the first set of hills, we found this perfect prairie pothole, where a few White Pelicans, some Mallards, and a family of grebes were cursing in the mist.

There were birds nesting on the shot grass itself of course. We flushed what was probably a Grasshopper Sparrow (shown in the following image) from this nest. That was fortunate as the nest was right in our path and so well hidden that one of us would likely have stepped on it. We were careful to cover it once more before we moved on.

As the morning progressed and we wandered deeper into the prairie, the sun broke through and the clouds flew off to the east. However, it got even windier. Here we have Julie and Ann on the left and two of my fellow ramblers on the right, cresting a hill on the prairie, and then a shot of the prairie under clearing skies.

Better light made close-ups a bit more likely, and the rising wind made them a bit more unlikely. A wash. This is a Penstimon with a tiny grasshopper or katydid passenger.

As we headed slowly back toward the bus, we walked up on this Prairie Garter Snake…one the lager Garters I have seen, and very fresh looking, either from the wash she got in the wet grass or because she had recently shed a skin.

And a few moments and several hundred yards further on we happened across a Northern Leopard Frog, which was undoubtedly what brought the Garter snake out onto the short grass.

And we will finish as we began (almost) with one last shot of Prairie Smoke and an image of a few of my fellow ramblers on the short grass prairie…by now under a clear blue sky.

And after all that there is still the Sunday thought. I will keep it short. The Prairie Ramble is a celebration in so many ways of spirit as it works out in humans, and I can only be thankful. Thankful that this little remnant of short grass prairie exist at all, and to all the individuals who have kept it unbroken over the years. Thankful to North Dakotans like Ann Hoffert and Rich Bohn (and so many others) who are currently working to save the prairie…Ann through promoting tourism and birding, and Rich by working directly with farmers. Thankful most of all, of course, to the creative spirit who loved this complex and wonderful ecosystem into existence in the first place, and then gave us the gift of the capacity to enjoy it! Happy Sunday.