Western Prairie is our largest planted prairie.  This path is the way to Big View Prairie – one of our remnant bluff prairies.

Big View Prairie is at the far south end of Western Prairie, on one of our highest south facing bluffs.   In the last few years the sumac around the edges has been invading the open prairie in the middle.  Mike just got a new lopping tool and wanted to try it out, so we decided to cut and treat the sumac.

Mike with his long handled lopper.

Mike mowed the top – the flat part.  The rest was too steep to mow so Mike cut the sumac with his lopper, and I followed behind and treated the stumps.

View from below when it was about half done

After we finished, Mike took a drone photo so we could see the full effect.  The lightest part at the top is the mowed area.  We cut and treated almost to the bottom of the steepest part.  The last bits, along the bottom, are thick tangles of mixed brush that we left for another time.

Another way to control sumac is to cut it (without treating) twice in one summer for several years in a row.  We’re trying this method on our smaller, more accessible prairie remnants.

Indian Grass Point with no sumac – after Mike cut it twice.

It’s been a good summer for Swallowtails.  This is a male Tiger Swallowtail on Field Thistle – one of our native thistles.  Native thistles have beautiful showy flowers, and are favorite butterfly nectaring plants right now.

Female Tiger Swallowtail – yellow form

Female Tiger Swallowtail – black form – showing the faint black tiger stripes

Giant Swallowtail on Prairie Blazing Star

Northern Pearly-eye on the front of my EV

Viceroy

Great Spangled Fritillaries mate in early summer, but wait to lay eggs until late summer or fall.  So by this time of the summer, the adults are often worn and with tattered wings.

Mated pair of Eastern Tailed-blues

After finding Leadplant Flower Moths last month, I searched to see if I could find any of their caterpillars.  I found just one – they’re very well camouflaged.  Hopefully there are more.

Pat’s Prairie – one of the very first prairies we planted, in the winter of 2000/2001.

Prairie Wild Onion in Pat’s Prairie.  I’d forgotten that we’d included these seeds in the mix.  I found a patch of about a dozen blooms.

The wet end of East Center Valley Prairie is full of flowers right now, and the flowers are full of bees and butterflies.

More East Center Valley flowers – Joe Pye Weed, Sneezeweed, Boneset and Blue Lobelia

We stood here this morning and looked and listened, and there was a loud, constant buzzing of bees – all the ones I could see were Bumble Bees.  Joe Pye Weed, Boneset and Blue Lobelia.

A few more wetland flowers…

Swamp Thistle

Slender False Foxglove

I was able to get a few of these orchid plants a few years ago from a neighboring farm where the crop field was expanding very close to the wet spot where they were growing.  They grew and bloomed here for a few years, and then I didn’t see them again until this year.  It’s nice to know that they’re still surviving.

Ghost Pipes – formerly called Indian Pipes.  They’re small and hard to see – I almost always miss seeing them until they’re finished flowering and starting to dry up.

Hedge Bindweed – a lovely large native morning glory.

Fireweed

Yellow Garden Spider – a very large showy spider

After walking and driving up and down one of our trails numerous times this summer, I finally noticed this Bald-faced Hornets’ nest.   It was nice to have a nest far away enough to be safe from stings, but close enough to be able to watch the hornets.

Here’s a video of some of the activity.  I think the hornet on the left was adding to the structure.

I went by a few days later and discovered this.  We’re guessing it was destroyed either by a bear reaching up from below, or a raccoon reaching down from a higher branch.  The hornets were busy at the bottom – maybe salvaging what they could.  The next day there were no hornets and the structure was nearly gone.

Tricolored Bumble Bee on Purple Prairie Clover

A deer died near our bird watching bench in the Glen.  It’s very stinky, so we’ve been avoiding it on our walks.  The vultures worked on the carcass for several days – 4 or 5 would fly up out of the Glen when we got close.  And one day a Bald Eagle flew up with them.

Cedar Waxwings

This is the leaf mine of a tiny moth larva in an aspen leaf.  I’ve tried to rear one for a long time and finally succeeded in getting an adult.  The mine starts near the petiole of the leaf, and ends at the tip where the caterpillar folded over the edge of the leaf and made a tiny cocoon.  The dark line down the center of the mine is frass (poop) from the caterpillar.

Here’s the adult – one of the smallest moths I’ve ever photographed – 2-3 mm long.  It’s called a Common Aspen Leaf Miner.

We’ve started our annual count of migrating monarchs – the number we see on our afternoon walk.  We start counting in mid-August, which is between generations, so we don’t see many at first.  Things usually start to pick up toward the end of August.  Now we’re seeing a lot of Monarchs – much higher numbers than last year at this time.   Our best day so far was yesterday – August 30 – when we counted 141.

Mike made a new page that shows numbers from all the monarch counting we’ve done – starting in 2017.  Here’s the chart that shows the cumulative numbers based on our daily counts.  Click on the photo to see the full page with all his charts.

Monarch on Rough Blazing Star

Monarch on Stiff Goldenrod

The landscape is starting to change to the colors of fall.

Morning wetland

Goldenrod yellows

Sawtooth Sunflowers

Indian Grass Point looking into Center Valley

Buffalo Ridge Prairie

The third year of Maze Meadow – one of our wetland plantings.

Monarda, Oxeye and Yellow Coneflower

Center Valley from the top of Indian Grass Point – on a clear day.

Center Valley view on a day when we were getting smoke from the Canadian and Minnesota wildfires.

Some days brought very dense smoke and a wood smoke smell – we wore masks outside.

Wetland smoke

Maze Meadow with smoke

My project all month has been pulling Wild Parsnip.  It’s been nice to be near – and sometimes in – the creek, especially in the hot weather.

This is one of the big beaver dams along the creek.  I think the pile of willow sticks in the middle of the pond is a food cache.  The sticks have been there so long that they’re starting to sprout green leaves.

This section of the creek had Wild Parsnip all along the edge.  Now I’ve pulled it all, and hopefully, in a year or two, there will be much less to pull.

My best insect find this month was several Leadplant Flower Moths.  Considered ‘special concern’ in Wisconsin, their caterpillars eat Leadplant flowers and seeds.  They’re small, uncommon, and very well camouflaged.  I’d looked for them before but never found any.  This month I found 3, on two different bluff prairies.

I’ve been looking for the Leadplant Flower Moth caterpillars, and haven’t found any yet.  But in searching Leadplants, I’ve found a few other interesting caterpillars.  I thought at first that these might be Leadplant flower caterpillars, but they’re actually in a different family.  I’m pretty sure this is a Common Tan Wave caterpillar.

And another Common Tan Wave..

We did our annual Butterfly Count this month – on July 11.  As usual, it was a very hot day, and by the end we were exhausted.  4 of us counted, and we saw 35 species – click here to see the list.  Here are a few of the butterflies.

Common Buckeye

Eyed Brown

Northern Broken Dash

These are Japanese Beetles with eggs of Winsome Flies.  Winsome Flies were introduced into the US many years ago as a biological control for Japanese Beetles.  I’ve been seeing a few of the eggs here in the last few years, but not often, and not usually this many on one beetle.  When the flies hatch the larvae burrow into the beetles’ bodies, and eat them.

Little Yellow butterfly – a migrant from the south.

These are nests built by young Baltimore Checkerspot caterpillars.  Their eggs are laid in large groups on Turtlehead plants, and when the caterpillars hatch, they build a communal nest out of webbing where they live and eat for the rest of the summer.

Here are some of the caterpillars on top of a nest.  They’ll overwinter closer to the ground.  In the spring they become less gregarious, and also less picky about food plants.  I’ve found them on Swamp Betony and Plantain as well as Turtlehead.  The adults emerge in early summer.

This is the flower of Fringed Loosestrife – fairly common on our cool wetland hillside.  These flowers offer oil instead of nectar to visiting bees.  The photo shows the hundreds of tiny oil droplets.  There are specialist bees (Macropis sp.) that visit Loosestrife flowers to collect the oil and mix it with pollen to line their nest cells and feed their young.

I’ve been hoping to see the specialist bees, but so far I’ve only found this Sweat Bee.

American Bellflower is spreading in our open woods.

Wood Lily

Prairie Blazing Star in the Narrows Prairie – not quite blooming yet

Prairie Blazing Star beginning to bloom in the wetland

There are dozens of rabbits on the driveway this year.  They don’t like to move out of the way for walkers or vehicles.

Walnut Woods

Prairie Phlox and Spiderwort in Buffalo Ridge Prairie

Morning mist over the wetland

My most recent project has been in the wetland – pulling wild Parsnip.  So I’m seeing a lot of wetland flowers and butterflies.

Creek with Golden Alexanders

These are the most common butterflies in the wetland right now – Baltimore Checkerspots.

This shows the intricate patterning on the tops of their wings.

We made a new wetland path that follows the creek.

And we added a bench – now we can sit and watch water running over the rapids.

I was up on one of the prairie points a few weeks ago, with a group of biologists, when we heard a big tree fall down below.  We often hear trees fall in the woods, and I seldom find them afterwards.  But when we walked back down toward the house, we found this one – the big cottonwood along Cabin Road.   It had fallen right across our path.

It was a huge old tree, and a big project getting it off the path – the pieces were so big that they were difficult to cut, and some were too heavy for the tractor.

But we finally got it and the path is open again.

Spiderwort is blooming – especially in the upper prairies.  The flowers come out in the mornings and on cloudy days, and close on sunny afternoons.

Spiderworts in Western Prairie

We’ve found a few Wood Lilies.  These were a surprise – blooming in one of the planted prairies.

Glade Mallows grow along creeks and streams and are uncommon in Wisconsin – they’re considered a plant of ‘special concern’.  In 2020 I found some growing about 5 miles from us.  I collected seeds and threw them out along our part of the creek.  This year I’ve found at least 15 plants growing, and 4 of them are blooming.  Males and females grow on separate plants – these are male flowers.

We only have a few Pale Purple Coneflowers.  This species doesn’t normally grow this far north, but we must have gotten a few seeds mixed in with other seeds I bought.

Like other flowers in the Asteraceae – the Aster Family – its ‘flower’ is actually a cluster of long strap-like ray flowers, surrounding a circle of tiny disk flowers.  This photo shows some of the open disk flowers near the edge of the disk.

We’re seeing lots of summer butterflies

Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Hill’s Thistle

Great Spangled Fritillaries are flying everywhere at this time of year.

Great Spangled Fritillaries on Poke Milkweed flowers.

They sometimes have dramatic variations in the amount of black on their wings.

Edwards’ Hairstreak

Mated pair of Northern Cloudywings

Summer bees

Bumble bee on Green Milkweed

Golden Alexanders Mining Bee – a specialist bee on Golden Alexanders

Bee on White Camas – I’m hoping to get an ID on this one.  White Camas is poisonous, so not many insects eat or nectar on it.

A bear

We’ve been seeing lots of snakes.

Eastern Milk Snake

A very small but fierce Red-bellied Snake.  None of the snakes we have here are dangerous – they just try to look like they are.

The migrating birds have gone through, and the ones we’re seeing now are ones that nest here.

Rose-breasted Grosbeak

Mourning Dove

Belted Kingfisher – female

House Wren – one of the loudest singers

And an unusual one, for us, a Black-and-White Warbler.  We’ve never seen one here so late, but according to the Wisconsin Breeding Bird Atlas, they can breed this far south.

Here are a few more interesting creatures.

A Feather-legged Fly on Golden Alexanders

A Stable Fly – common, and not native (native to Eurasia and Africa), but the photo shows how amazing tiny creatures are if you look closely.

Woodland Giant Wolf Spider – carrying babies on her abdomen

Dogbane Beetle – the larvae eat roots and the adults eat leaves of Dogbane.

I found one Butterfly Milkweed plant with nearly yellow flowers.

Blue Flag Iris in the wetland

Indian Paintbrush and Raspberry

Sunset over the creek

Spring flowers and tree leaves came in slowly this year – I think because of the cool weather.

Now that summer temperatures are here, everything is moving faster – bugs, butterflies and flowers.

Blue-eyed Grass on the prairie points

Rue Anemone in the savannas and the woods

Wood Anemones on Maple Ridge

Marsh Marigolds and Red Osier stems

Hawthorn

Black Cherry

Hidden Oaks Point had more Hoary Puccoon blooming than we’ve ever seen.

More Hoary Puccoon on the point

This is on a north facing slope along the trail above the cabin.  Ten years ago I collected some Dutchman’s Breeches seed pods from a woods down the road from us, threw them down on this cool shady hillside, and forgot about them.  We walked by last week, and found many plants, most of them blooming!

Some animal made a home here – under and around the roots of a tree.  The Dutchman’s Breeches were growing and blooming all around the holes.

More of the Dutchman’s Breeches

This is another species that grows nearby, but I’ve never found it growing here naturally – Silky Prairie Clover.  I planted some seeds a few years ago, and yesterday we found it growing on the sandy part of the Knife Edge Point.

Dwarf Raspberry – in the shady woods on Maple Ridge

Lupines almost in bloom – I like the geometric shapes they make at this stage.

Lupine in full bloom

Now our biggest patch of Lupine is full of Blister Beetles so the flowers are almost gone.  These beetles emerge every year – they’re native – and eat first the Lupine flowers and seeds, and when those are finished, they move on to White Wild Indigo.  They never get quite all of the flowers – isolated clumps usually escape – and it doesn’t hurt the plants, it just means we don’t get many seeds.  Larvae of these beetles are parasites in nests of sweat bees.

Hobomok Skipper on Lupine

Mountain Blue-eyed Grass

Harebell

Balsam Ragwort

Canada Anemone

Wild Geranium

Indian Paintbrush

Butterflies are starting to congregate on our driveway again – one Gorgone Checkerspot with Northern Crescents.

Viceroy

Northern Cloudywing

Arctic Skipper

We started seeing Monarchs about a week ago – May 24.

I’ve been seeing some of the big moths at my lights…

Polyphemus

Modest Sphinx showing off its rosy underwings

And here are some small day-flying moths…

Eight-spotted Forester

Another view of the Eight-spotted Forester showing its fuzzy orange leggings.

Mournful Thyris – a mated pair.

We’re having fun taking bird photos.

Indigo Bunting

Northern Waterthrush

Yellow-bellied Sapsucker

Solitary Sandpiper

Yellow Warbler

A very wet Field Sparrow

Common Yellowthroat

Chestnut-sided Warbler

Here’s a bunch of tiny, newly hatched spiders – moving very fast…

and a gorgeous Eastern Milk Snake crossing our driveway

This is an Autumn Olive bush in bloom – only the second one I’ve found here, and the first time I’ve seen one blooming.  It’s pretty but very invasive, so I’ve cut and treated it so it won’t come back.

The Hidden Oaks Prairie bench – a good place to watch spring change to summer.

This was the way the month started.

Poor bluebirds – hard to get to their front door.

But they survived the cold snap, and now most of the nest boxes are occupied.

The crocuses bloomed near the old farmhouse.  I often miss them because they bloom so early – this photo was taken on March 31.

Folks around here call Pasqueflowers, crocuses.  It’s easy to see the similarities – similar blooming times, color, and flower shape – even though they’re not closely related.  Garden crocuses are in the Iris family, and were originally from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.   Pasqueflowers are in the Buttercup family.  The ones we have here are native to North America, but there’s a European Pasqueflower species that’s often planted in gardens.

We’ve found 4 clumps of Pasqueflower blooms this year.  This one had the most flowers.

A single Pasqueflower

The first Garter Snake of the year – on April 5.

Migrating birds are arriving – more every day.

Yellow-rumped Warbler bathing in the stream in the Glen

Swamp Sparrow – they prefer hunting for insects in the stream.

A nuthatch (year around resident) building a nest.

The beavers have been busy in the creek – upstream from our driveway.  This is a dam that’s been here for several years – it had a huge lake behind it last year, but this year the lake level is much lower.

A view of the lake looking downstream.  I think the big pile of sticks must be their food supply.

Here’s their newest dam – upstream from the original lake.  It’s formed a big new lake, with lots of small side streams feeding down into the creek.  We had a very wet walk!

Another view of the creek between the big dams showing a small dam.  We found the two large dams, and 3 smaller dams below the new lake.

We found a small island made of grass with one Marsh Marigold.

Sedge meadow – another part of the wetland with sedges (probably Carex stricta) just poking up out of their mounds of dead leaves.

Walking in the sedge meadows is an adventure.  The sedge mounds get taller every year, and the spaces between them are wet and muddy – sometimes with Marsh Marigolds.

Marsh Marigolds

I haven’t found Dutchman’s Breeches growing here naturally, but they do grow nearby.  I planted some here a few years ago on a cool, shady hillside, and they’re thriving.

Hoary Puccoon on a bluff prairie

An unusual Serviceberry – I’m not sure which species.

Wild Plums have a wonderful fragrance.  We get enveloped by clouds of scent as we take our walks.

Prairie Smoke

Bloodroot – we had a patch growing near the driveway that we thought had been killed by the spraying the road crew did last year, but some of the plants survived and even bloomed.

Pussytoes

Cuckoo Bee on Pussytoes blossom

Northern White Violet – a very early blooming species that’s common on many of our wooded hillsides

Prairie Blue-eyed Grass

Sweetgrass – one of the earliest blooming grasses

Devil’s Urn – a springtime fungus

American Lady – searching for Pussytoes to lay her eggs

Ruffed Grouse

Rue Anemone

Bird’s Foot Violet

Wood Anemone

A Red-headed Woodpecker has been visiting our feeders!  It’s reluctant to have its picture taken, so this is the only photo we have so far.    We’re hoping it will stay around.

We’re in the middle of a ‘discussion’ with the beavers about a new dam they’d like to build.  Their preferred spot is across the upstream entrance to the culvert that goes under our driveway.

We know from experience that a dam there will eventually wash out our driveway.  (We’ve looked into ‘beaver deceivers’ and other tricks, but none of them will work here.)  So every night the beavers build, and every day we pull the sticks out and float them downstream to a spot where they’ve had a dam in the past.    We were hoping they’d get the hint….

We’d been doing that for about a week when we discovered that the beavers have just been retrieving the same sticks from the pile we’ve been making, and dragging them up to build above the culvert again.  They’ve made a path along the edge of the creek to get around the rapids.

Here’s the place where they get back in the creek to float the sticks through the culvert to their dam.

It’s become an endless loop – keeping us all very busy.  Yesterday we took our stick pile apart and pulled it farther downstream.  So far they haven’t rebuilt – we’re keeping our fingers crossed.

Spring leaf colors

More springtime leaves

Willow Bend

Pine Point Bluff

At the beginning of the month, when it seemed like spring had come, we had cold nights, but warm days and a lot of melting snow.

On some days we got a little light spring snow

There were lots of misty mornings

Center Valley from Indian Grass Point – March 6 – only a little snow left on north-facing Maple Ridge

The deer were enjoying it – these two were resting in one of our trails

They were reluctant to leave but eventually we got too close.

On one of the warmest days we saw our first moth of the year – The Infant – on March 9.

Another Infant showing off its bright orange hind wings

Mourning Cloak a few days later – a butterfly that overwinters as an adult

Then….snow…

We woke up to 20 inches, and it was still snowing.

The final total was about 21 inches of heavy wet snow.

The birds were hungry – a big flock of Common Grackles and Red-winged Blackbirds sat in the trees near the house, and ate food the other birds dropped under the feeders.

We were snowbound for a few days, and even when Mike got out to the road, getting through the pile the plows had made was a big project.

Blooming willows and Red Osier Dogwood along the creek

Finally the last of the snow melted away.

In spite of all the weather disruptions, migrating birds have been arriving…..

I worried about the bluebirds, but they survived that cold week and now they’re calling everywhere.

Another bluebird.

In the last few days we’ve seen Brown Creepers

and Eastern Phoebes.

The first Pasqueflower – March 25

And another on March 30

American Hazelnut – male and female blossoms.  The male blossoms are in a catkin; the females are the tiny red styles at the tips of the buds.  The female blossoms are so tiny that I often miss seeing them.

Scarlet Cup Fungus

An odd fungus that I’ve never seen before – Dead Man’s Fingers.  It grows on decaying wood.

Aspen catkins

Pat’s Prairie

The snow melts first on hilltops and south facing hillsides, and last in the narrow parts of the valleys and north facing slopes.

Knife Edge Point

Looking south from Hidden Oaks Point

It’s a treat to be able to walk up to the tops of the hills – we can’t do that when the snow is deep.

The snow stayed on Buffalo Ridge longer than we expected.

As the snow melts it exposes tunnels that were made by small mammals traveling under the snow.

A shed antler

This is one of several kinds of galls found on goldenrod.  They’re sometimes called Apple Galls or Ball Galls because of their shape.   They’re easy to spot in winter.  The insect that triggers the plant to make this gall is a small fly.  I’ve never seen the fly, so I’ve collected several of the galls and I’m hoping a fly will emerge from one of them this spring.

Chickadees and Downy Woodpeckers often poke through the galls to get at the tasty larvae inside.

I planted the last of my seeds – throwing them out in places where we cleared brush last fall.  3 Finger Valley looks much different with snow.

Our regular winter walk is the driveway – along Center Valley and through the wetland.

Sunrise through the pines

Frost on plants along the creek

Our aufeis formed again this winter, along the stream in the Glen.  The surface ice melts on warm days, but the frozen part still spreads out much wider than the actual stream bed.

Frost and galls on a willow

A willowy part of the wetland

Willow Bend has lost many of its huge old willows to beavers.  Now the beavers have started work on the Silver Maple in the foreground.

Sunrise

Bluebirds and Robins have returned, and yesterday it felt like spring.  But today it’s cold and more snow is on its way.

This was taken New Year’s Day – looking forward into the new year.

We had a few weeks of icy driveway.  It made walking a little more complicated, even with cleats on our boots.  There’s a tiny sun-dog on the left side of the tree, straight in line with the sun.

I did a few small seeding projects before it got too cold.

I planted seeds around Hidden Oaks Point – where we’ve done clearing work in the last few years.  I threw seeds on top of the snow around and under the edges of these trees – last fall’s clearing project

and on the part of the point we cleared in 2024.

and around the edges of Badger Point.

This is a stream that flows down to join the creek.

The creek looks very frosty right now, especially in the mornings, with hoarfrost on all the nearby plants.

Hoarfrost at -26 degrees

Northern lights were expected on a few nights, but it was so cold that I didn’t spend much time outside looking for them.   They were there – hiding behind our hill – but this is the best view I got.

Here are a few of our favorite sunrises…

The sun sets behind a hill and later than we usually walk, so we don’t see it as often.  Here’s one that lit up the whole sky.

Our aufeis is forming again.  Normally this is a tiny stream – only about a foot wide.

A rabbit has been living under our porch.  Before the snow came it spent its days sitting in the tiny prairie between the porch and the living room windows.  We haven’t seen it much since it snowed – hopefully it has a warm cozy place to shelter.

The hundreds of little balls on our willow branches are Willow Pinecone Galls – made by a small fly called a Gall Midge.

Here’s a close up of one of the galls.   The midge larva will stay inside the gall all winter and then emerge as an adult in the spring.  Galls are made by the plant in response to damage by the fly.  Gall-making insects are usually particular about which host plants they use, and the host plants make a particular kind of gall for each species of insect.  So the species of insect can be identified by observing the gall.

These galls look like Christmas ornaments.

This is a gall made by a different species of midge on a different species of willow.

I also found some cocoons hanging from the willows – well camouflaged because of all the galls around them.  This was an old Polyphemus cocoon – probably from last year.  It had a hole in the top where the adult had emerged.

I found another Polyphemus cocoon with a live pupa inside.  It’s in a cage on my porch now – hopefully an adult will emerge in the spring.

After the first big snow, Mike drove the tractor with the snowblower up the hill and cleared some of our paths.  It was nice to be able to walk up there and see the snow covered prairies.

Indian Grass Point – looking down into the valley.  The tree is one of our ‘bonsai oaks’ – closely trimmed every winter by the deer.

The path through Buffalo Ridge Prairie

The Narrows Prairie

But most of our walks have been on the driveway because it’s easier to keep cleared.

Morning sky over the wetland

Buds on the Silver Maple near the creek are starting to swell, even this early in the winter.

They look like they’re just about ready to open, but spring is still several months away.

Most of the color these days is in the sky.  We see more sunrises than sunsets, because we see them on our morning walks.

Silver Maple with sunrise

Another sunrise

Sunset over the Knife Edge Prairie

More sunset clouds

I’m working on one partly outdoor – project: cleaning, organizing and planting seeds in some of our prairie and wetland areas.  I’m over-seeding places that have been planted before, so I don’t have to worry about how evenly I spread the seeds – which makes the project much easier.  This is one of the wetland areas after planting.

Mourning Doves in their favorite tree – a Box Elder near the birdfeeders

We only got about 7 inches of snow in this latest storm, but it’s sticking to all the trees and covering our paths.

Snowy woods

Stream running down to the creek

Pine Point

Sun after the storm

The prairies are getting their winter colors.

Hidden Oaks Savanna

The southeast facing side of Hidden Oaks Point – with aspen sprouts creeping in

Afternoon sun through the leaves

The last butterfly of the season – an Eastern Comma.  It’s headed into shelter for the winter – tucked in a brush pile or inside a crack in wood or bark.

There have been flocks of Eastern Bluebirds migrating through, heading toward warmer weather and more bugs.

Northern migrants have arrived to spend the winter.  American Tree Sparrows…

…and Golden Eagles.

A Northern Shrike – the first one we’ve seen for more than a year.

Our most exciting bird visitor has been an immature Red-headed Woodpecker that’s been here for the last few weeks.  We first saw it on November 4 and it was still here on November 28.  The red feathers on its head are just starting to come in.

Our fall project turned into several different large projects.

Mike spent a few weeks cutting and treating honeysuckle bushes and buckthorn along the western side of 3 Finger Valley.  This part of the valley had large honeysuckles growing all along the edge.   Honeysuckle leaves stay green late into the fall, so it’s a good time to find and cut them.

after cutting honeysuckles

with honeysuckles

This shows a jungle of honeysuckle and prickly ash that had grown up in the middle of one of the valley fingers.  It took Mike several days to cut and remove this one tangle.

After clearing

Honeysuckle tangle

Another part of the project was clearing a section of Hidden Oaks Point.  We cleared the southeast facing side over several years – from about 2015 to 2017.  But we’d never tackled the southwest facing side.

This shows the way that side has changed since 2002.   For a long time it was thick woods – oaks mixed with Box Elder, Prickly Ash, and sumac, with invasive honeysuckle and buckthorn filling in between the trees.   This month we cut and treated the invasives, and cleared out the smaller trees.  Mike cleared the huge sumac grove that was covering the end of the point.  There’s still more opening up to do, but it will have to wait until next year.

11/2025

10/2025

7/2006

9/2002

A closer view, showing just the part we worked on this fall.  Now the honeysuckle and the giant sumac ‘trees’ are gone.

11/28/2025

10/30/2025

An even closer look…. a group of Wild Plums was struggling to survive among all the invasives.

11/28/25

11/2/25

I took this photo part way through the project.  When we arrived each morning, the hillside was still in shadow.  But as we worked, the sun rose above the far side of the valley and shone through the trees.

Aurora and stars – November 12

This opossum was nosing around in the path just in front of us.  I was so intent that it didn’t notice us until we were very close – then it quickly scrambled up a tree near the path.

One of the Red Squirrels in Walnut Woods – working on a walnut.

Knife Edge Prairie

Afternoon sun on the Knife Edge Point

After the snow….our huge Black Oak on Indian Grass Point

Indian Grass Point

Pine Point and the creek

In spite of winter’s arrival, we found one small sign of spring – a few early flowers on a willow.

A winter sunrise