Native American prairie plants germinate and flower later than European plants. This means that the big winds that sometimes brings spring grass fires, fail to ignite, kill, or damage the plants because they are still dormant. It’s a handy trick. OTOH, because of their later germination time, it was easy for non-native plants to get a foothold and never let go over year.
As an example, Dandelions are not native to the Americas. We consider it mainly to be a weed. Their biggest bloom time is well before the native flowers are blooming. Yes, we are aware of their nutritive value and tastiness, but they really don’t belong over here and they are everywhere.
An example of needing fire is the Jack Pine tree, which is native to the northern tier of states and across the provinces of Canada. A stand of Jack Pines shows often that all the trees in the area are the same age. That’s because Jack Pine seeds need a fire to germinate. So, we do controlled burns in our forests too if the Jack Pines are dying of age. It clears the dead wood and allows new trees to be born.
It has finally rained a little bit after a very dry and hot summer. Last tme I saw the part of the Erlenbruch that used to be a pond it looked like this:
and the water lentils all looked dead. I’ll see next week whether the rain starts filling up the ponds and ditches again.
A neighbour has told me there are beavers in the area. I am not sure, I fear he is pulling my leg. He claims that this is a sign of beavers:
Those are sticks where somebody or something seems to have peeled away the bark of some branches. I don’t know. Will have to buy a motion activated camera soon. The sticks were already there some months ago, when the ditch was not dry yet.
Managed to take a picture of a dragonfly! Crocothemis erythraea, male, it’s usually not easy to come close enough for a pic:
Now I wonder whether there are beaver in the vicinity after all. What else would make those?
Can you see the spider web? The trees are almost 6 ft. apart, I always wonder how they manage to set up the frame for the web:
Fall is coming, we had some rain, mushrooms are popping up everywhere.
A few months ago, when I found a colony of cattle egrets about 25 miles south of London, I considered proposing soggy fields with cattle in them as a habitat. Now I’m persuaded. Let me explain.
We spent some time recently on the Marais (marshes) of the Cotentan peninsula. We drove down from Carentan to Utah Beach - think Normandy, Camembert and a thousand other cheeses. There’s a lot of cattle in Normandy. And for long stretches of that drive you didn’t see a cow that wasn’t surrounded by cattle egrets.
OK, habitats: suddenly Normandy - and to some extent the UK - is being invaded by a new species. They follow cows around and eat insects revealed by the hoof prints. Global warming has helped them, no doubt; but I’m thinking: have they also found a niche that no native species was exploiting? Or at least, not doing very well at?
My thoughts, of the top of my hat: If it is a niche they are exploiting, but it is a niche that did not exist for some time, since the extinction of the megafaune at the end of the last glaciation until humans introduced cows, some 1,000s of years later. If a native bird exploited this niche, which is more than probable, it lost it and it seems it went extinct. Now a neozoon which exploited this niche in its original habitat has arrived and spreads faster than a local species can adapt to this niche. Under this circumstances it will be now harder for a native species to evolve to fill it, as it is no longer vacant.
The cattle egrets seem as per Wikipedia to be one of the birds that is spreading fastest around the world. The human induced spread of cattle probaly plays a role here.
Fascinating that you found a colony in the UK, and kudos to you for being able to identify a bird that should not be expected to be found there! How did you do that?
That all sounds extremely plausible. Nice analysis. Certainly I can’t think of a “European” bird that exploits that niche.
The story of finding my local cattle egret population is in the Today In Nature thread starting at post 1132. Somewhere in that story I talk about having seen cattle egrets previously, but not realising what they were. When I just did a search to find the UK cattle egret story, I also found a forgotten post about the earlier sightings (!) See Today In Nature post 440.
Thank you for your kind words. Plausible, of course, does not mean it is right! I have been thinking overnight and it ocurred to me that this grass/cattle biotope was never that frequent in Europe anyway: Europe was pre-historically more forest than savanna. Deer and the wild boars in the woods are not cattle egret’s biotope. Now we humans have made grassland (for cattle and sheep), which is like Africa’s savanna, were the cattle egrets came from. The niche did not exist for aeons, but not for lack of big ruminants (that too), but for lack of grass. That may be the reason no “European” bird filled it up. Hard to fill something up when it is not there.
It is probably a bit of both and something else too. Ecology is complex.
Now I am off to the Today in Nature-thread to read that story up.
We’ve been away for a couple of weeks, so I’ve been unable to post pictures (long story); we had barely set off when I received major prairie updates from@Broomstickthat I was unable to post. We’re back home now so, with apologies to Broomstick for the delay, it’s catchup time. This is going to take a while - seven posts upcoming, narrative by Broomstick and, as ever, click on the photo for the full image:
Heading into autumn the [Hoosier] prairie is at its peak right now. I had hopes this year would see the taller grass at 3 meters but July was very dry and the grass topped out at “only” around 2 meters.
We were talking about controlled burns [post 93 and following]. The attached deadwood has been through several controlled burns now. You can see where the wood is blackened from the heat but clearly the fires were not intense enough to actually reduce these tree trunks to ash. Living trees are even more resistant to a proper controlled burn. (Of course, it is possible for a controlled burn to become uncontrolled but it’s not common because precautions are taken).
Taken today [7 Sept], from the parking lot because trying to re-create the above photo just results in a wall of green right now. The sign with the handicap symbol on it is about 2 meters tall so that will give you the scale of the vegetation. As you can see, we get flowers in the fall. More specifically, these are from the edge of the prairie and more typical of “disturbed ground” vegetation.
This is a really good example of how some of the plants are starting to die off and dry out - this is what fuels prairie fires, both controlled and uncontrolled.
These pictures are from the piece of land that, strictly speaking, isn’t primal prairie, it’s the “buffer zone” purchased to help protect the prairie and is currently being restored to prairie. It’s quite a few years further along that Wakehurst, and has the extra bonus of being in the correct climate zone and benefiting from controlled burns:
In the spring houses were visible from this vantage point. No more - the plants have grown higher than I am tall now.
These pictures are from the Old Prairie, the original. As you can see we do not have fields of mainly one flower like the black eyed susans Wakehurst had earlier this year, that sort of thing is a feature of disturbed ground and re-seeding of an area. A mature prairie does have flowers, but overall it’s a much more diverse mix of plants with no one species dominating except in very small patches.
Concerning my swamp, it really looks wet now. Wet, but frozen solid to the ground. I estimate the depth to be no more than 30 cm:
In the second picture there are still red berries! Hope some birds enjoy them. I believe I have reached the limits of my property for the first time now that I can walk on the frozen ground without sinking! Not that it matters, but it was fun!
Still have seen no wild boars, but that must be them:
