It’s been a very warm month with not much rain.  It’s been good for working – in the cooler mornings – but we’re hoping fall weather will arrive soon.

The trees are still green, but the prairie grasses are turning brown, and most of the blooming flowers are goldenrods and asters.

The Knife Edge Point

 

Sky Blue Asters and Showy Goldenrod in the Narrows Prairie

 

I’ve been cutting and treating some of the thousands of aspen sprouts in the Narrows Prairie – this is the way it looks before I start.

 

This area – near the path – is where I cut and treated aspen sprouts last year.  There are still thick aspen patches all around it.  My hope is that someday most of this prairie will be aspen free.

 

I’ve also been working on both of our large bluff prairies.

Big View Prairie is the second largest.  This is the way it looks from below.  The trees at the top are a savanna area that we’re restoring; below them is the dry prairie remnant; below that is another savanna remnant; and below that is Pine Point Prairie – planted in fall of 2000.

 

I’ve been cutting and treating sumac and aspen sprouts in the prairie remnant while Mike clears some of the fallen trees brush in the savanna area above it.

This is the top savanna.  We had a friend cut most of the smaller trees a few years ago but we never finished picking up all the cut logs.  Mike spent a few days here with the tractor, driving though tall plants, unearthing logs and fallen trees and moving them to our giant brush pile.

 

This is a view of Big View Prairie from the drone.  Mike loves taking these ‘tiny Marcie’ photos.  I’m in the picture – cutting and treating sumac – just below and to the left of the birch snag in the middle.

 

And this is another part of the remnant where I’m working to clear sumac and aspen.

 

Big View Prairie’s big view down the valley

 

This is Great Plains Lady’s Tresses – a late blooming native orchid that grows on dry prairies.  I’ve found it blooming on 3 of our prairie remnants this year including Big View Prairie.

 

This huge Pandorus Sphinx moth caterpillar was on a Virginia Creeper vine in a tangle of brush in the upper savanna.  It was the largest one I’d ever seen – longer and bigger around than my thumb.  I put it in a jar, gave it Virginia Creeper leaves to eat and potting soil to dig in.  It ate for a few more days and then dug itself into the soil to pupate.  Hopefully it will emerge as an adult in the spring.

 

I spent a few days on Sumac Prairie – our largest and steepest remnant – doing some clearing work, and looking for some of the Northern Flower Moths that I find there every fall.  Northern Flower Moths have only one generation a year, and the adults only fly for about a week, so if I want to see them, I have to get up there at the right time.  Until now, the only ones I’ve seen have been on Sumac Prairie itself.  But this year, as I was walking up to see them, I walked through Sheep Hill Bluff Prairie – a 3 year old prairie that we planted on the lower slope of the hill.  As I was walking through the dewy flowers and grasses in the planted prairie – there, right in my path – I found a Northern Flower Moth!

It’s the first time I’ve seen one anywhere except Sumac Prairie.  It will be interesting to see if the colony is expanding into this planted prairie.

Above Sheep Hill Bluff Prairie is a thick overgrown savanna that we haven’t gotten around to clearing.

 

And above that is Sumac Prairie.  I did find more Northern Flower Moths in Sumac Prairie including these two – a male and a female – on a Silky Aster flower.

 

I found one other small moth in Sumac Prairie – an Arcigera Flower Moth.  These flower moths are much more common – and they come to my moth lights – but I don’t often see them flying during the day.

 

Sumac Prairie is extremely steep, which makes it difficult to work on for very long.

 

The center of Sumac Prairie is in good shape – with Gray Goldenrod and Silky Aster blooming.

 

The edges still need a lot of clearing work – this is the edge I was working on this year.  I cleared some of the sumac and aspens that were invading the open area.

 

Saw-tooth Sunflowers blooming in Parsnip Meadow – one of our wet prairies.

 

Saw-tooth Sunflowers

 

I found lots of Fringed Gentian blooming in the wet prairie remnants this year.

 

More Fringed Gentian

 

While I was searching for the Fringed Gentian I found an unusual plant that I’d never seen before called Grass of Parnassus.  It’s not actually a grass – it has wide leaves and showy flowers and is in the same family as Bittersweet.   Most of the flowers had gone to seed, but there was still one flower blooming.

 

This is another of our wet prairies – with Joe Pye Weed, Sneezeweed, Great Blue Lobelia and Boneset.

 

Golden Borer Moth – the most interesting moth I’ve seen at my lights recently.  Its caterpillars spend most of their time inside Bottlebrush Grass stems, and also possibly the stems of lilies or Mayapples.  They aren’t very common, and the adults only fly for a week or two, and only at this time of year.  The last one I saw here was in 2014.

 

This tiny tree frog visited my lights one night.  The spaces between the dots on the sheet are 3/4 inch, so it’s a very small frog.  It was interested in the other creatures attracted to the light….

 

and eventually climbed up to the top of the garage door – maybe for a better view of the dinner possibilities.

 

This clump of New England Aster had several Forbes’ Tree Crickets sitting on stems and leaves in the flower cluster.  I don’t spot tree crickets very often, but we hear them singing during the day in late summer – they make a lot of noise for such small creatures.  (Here’s the sound of a Forbes’ Tree Cricket singing, recorded by MJ Hatfield in western Iowa.  Be careful – it’s very loud.)

 

A few butterflies….

Common Buckeye – a butterfly that doesn’t spend the winter here.  It flies up from farther south.  We’ve seen more of them than usual this summer.

 

Clouded Sulphur

 

Eastern Tailed-Blue

 

Male Black Swallowtail

 

Gray Comma

 

American Lady on Showy Goldenrod – another butterfly that doesn’t overwinter here.

 

Aphrodite Fritillary on Showy Goldenrod.  We haven’t seen many large fritillaries this year – hopefully they’ll be back to normal numbers next year.

 

Meadow Fritillary – one of the smaller fritillaries

 

The Monarch migration has moved through and is winding down now.  The numbers we saw were pretty low – about the same as last year but a few weeks later.  This is one of the few clusters we saw – on Tall Boneset.

 

The late Monarchs we’re seeing now are almost all nectaring on New England Aster.

 

New England Asters – a favorite of bumblebees as well as Monarchs

 

Rough Blazing Star is normally magenta, but once in a while we see white ones.

 

Storm clouds north of the Narrows Prairie.  I was working up here, watching the clouds coming closer, and decided it was time to head for home.  I got there just before it rained, but we only got a few drops.

 

A pair of Barred Owls has been hanging out in our wooded valleys.  We see them fly through the woods and across the path, and hear them hooting at night.  This one flew across in front of me as I was driving up the hill.  It flew into a tree next to the path, and watched me suspiciously as I drove slowly by.

 

Sunrise through the wetland mist