by The Prairie Enthusiasts | May 1, 2020 | News
This week more reptiles and amphibians are becoming active. The musical trill of American Toads can now be heard from some ponded wetlands. Toads typically breed when water temperatures are over 60⁰ F but may be heard singing from late April until mid-summer.
Bird’s-foot violets are starting to bloom in prairie areas. Bird’s-foot violets can be distinguished from the similar prairie violets by their protruding orange stamens which resemble a beak.
Red-headed Woodpeckers are known to be aggressive toward other birds, often seen chasing the much larger Pileated Woodpeckers where they co-exist. They become even more aggressive during this time of year, particularly with other Red-headed Woodpeckers, as they compete for nesting habitat and mates. Red-headed Woodpeckers are an iconic species of oak savannas. Steep population declines after the mid-1900’s were primarily due to habitat loss. Prescribed burning for oak savanna restoration creates more openings in the forest canopy and dead trees which are critical components for species recovery.
by The Prairie Enthusiasts | May 1, 2020 | News
Susan S. Chambers, Many Rivers Chapter member, explores the awe we can discover each and every day, and especially when we are isolated at home. A notable poet, she shows us how the comfort of a poem can touch us spiritually.
Aubade poem- An aubade is a morning love song (as opposed to a serenade, which is in the evening), or a song or poem about lovers separating at dawn.
Aubade: A Morning Routine
Knee reminds me to be cautious.
It only rises from the crumpled quilts
with support of end table and my third leg.
We make a metallic start.
The walk to bathroom, cold tile on bare feet,
the click of my cane. I flick the light on,
hang my extra appendage on the edge of the counter,
run the hot water, wash off gummy eyes.
Add eye-drops, run a brush through hair snarls,
take morning’s first pill. Outside my thick windows
a turkey calls. April is their month of lust.
I peek out to see a brilliant fanned tail strut close by.
This is a celebration, of sorts, my start each day.
I am still here, free of fever, cough or sore throat.
As I limp to my tea, I begin to hum.
Spring creeps closer, steered by the chortle
and mating dance of large birds.
Even isolated, I can join in the song.
By Susan S. Chambers, 2020
by The Prairie Enthusiasts | Apr 9, 2020 | News
Undaunted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Empire-Sauk Chapter delivered its March 28, 2020 basic burn crew training workshop online. Teachers Rob Baller, Andy Sleger and Scott Fulton, together with moderator Grace Vosen, utilized Zoom to present the 6-hour program to 31 students, including a number from a Dane County Parks volunteer training class which had been cancelled.
Scott Fulton teaching the Empire-Sauk Chapter online burn class. Photo by Karen Agee
The class was based on the standard TPE burn training program developed by Rob Baller several years ago to meet the training requirements under TPE’s Burn Policy for new volunteer burn crew members. The program, which conforms with guidelines from the Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council, includes sections on Fire Ecology, Fire Influences, Burn Techniques, Safety, Crew Assignments, Burn Plans and Equipment. Several videos are also used to illustrate fire behavior, including an excellent drone video of a complete prescribed burn conducted by TPE volunteers and staff at the Pleasure Valley Easement in 2018. The teaching team also developed a post-class quiz and feedback survey, presented to the students as an online survey using TPE’s NationBuilder website and database platform. Initial feedback has been very positive.
One challenge using Zoom was how to best receive and address questions from the participants. We decided to mute everyone except the presenters and use the Zoom Chat window for questions. This was highly successful – there was a good flow of questions, some of which were addressed immediately with others held to a question period at the end of each section. Interestingly, some of the participants chimed in with a great deal of additional information and discussion. This kind of rich interaction among the participants was unexpected but certainly welcome. Unfortunately, the online format did not allow us to do our normal hands-on demonstration of equipment and practice session with ignition and suppression, but we hope to conduct those sometime this fall.
Thanks to everyone involved – both teachers and students – for making this a success!
by The Prairie Enthusiasts | Apr 9, 2020 | News
Spring is in the air! We are blessed to have so much native habitat nearby to enjoy. We want to encourage you to go see a prairie, oak savanna, or local park to look for signs of spring. The seasonal weather we are having is just what we need to bring life out on the prairie. This will help us find that welcome feeling of hope and health! As you can see in these photos, this is a special time to be out in nature.
If you are wondering about where to go, check out the Sites page on our website (www.theprairieenthusiasts.org/sites) for detailed descriptions and directions to our properties. A few pages are still under construction, but we are working to have them all up soon. Even if you can’t go out, this is an easy way to learn about the TPE’s many preserves, most of which are fully open to the public.
We hope you can inspire your family and friends to come along. Take a walk together, relax for a while and renew yourself in nature. Please practice required social distancing and wearing a mask when others are around. On many of our sites you may be the only ones there.
Also remember that all of our preserves harbor rare plant, insect, bird, mammal, reptile and amphibian species, so please be careful as you hike around. Because of the potential for disturbance, dogs are not allowed on most of our sites.
The Prairie Enthusiasts, mainly through our member volunteers, steward and own 35 preserves totaling nearly 2,500 acres. We also care for thousands of acres of private lands for which we hold conservation easements, as well as a number of public parks and natural areas. All this Grassroots Conservation in Action is out there waiting for you to see.
Use your senses to take in the sights, sounds and smells of life springing up. Grassland birds and many others are coming back. The native bees are coming out to look for spring ephemerals. Frogs are singing, and the earth is fragrant with new growth. Many wonders of nature are out there for you to behold!
Have a great time, enjoy the prairie. Be safe, stay well. Spring is here again!
by The Prairie Enthusiasts | Apr 8, 2020 | News
The 2020 TPE burn season was dramatically shortened but was not a complete bust. Just as the season was getting underway the COVID-19 outbreak hit, with stay-at-home orders issued in late March for Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota. State, county and local authorities also issued burn bans in some places, and TPE made a recommendation to stop burning with volunteer crews on March 24.
Everyone in TPE understands that getting regular fire back onto the land is one of the most important things we do to help the natural communities in our care. We have also been planning, preparing and looking forward to getting together for this annual task, so the shutdown of the season was a huge disappointment for all of us. We reached out to all the chapters to find out what they had been able to accomplish this year.
Prescribed fire conducted in March 2020 by the Coulee Region Chapter. Photo by Stephen Winter
In the southern chapters, the season got underway around March 21. Several chapters (Empire-Sauk, Prairie Bluff, Coulee Region, and Minnesota Driftless) were able to get a small number of burns in each before the shutdown. The season starts considerably later for the more northern chapters, who were not able to get anything done. St. Croix Valley worked on burn breaks on March 21 with the intention of getting at least a few burns in right away but had a significant snowfall on March 22. By the time things melted, the ban was in place.
Ecologically, it is usually not important to get an established prairie or savanna burned in any particular year. However, as several people pointed out, when seeds were sown into established cool season grasses the previous fall or winter (so-called “inter-seeding”), it is important to burn the following spring to give the seeds an opening in which to successfully germinate and grow. Inter-seeding is becoming a common tactic for expanding remnants on many sites, and the potential loss of those seeds in terms of cost and/or volunteer time is a big one. Several people reported that this year they focused intensely on getting as many inter-seeded units burned as they could.
Burning has not completely stopped in all places. The Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council is looking into getting permission to allow small professional crews to be able to burn smaller sites. Some property owners are also managing to continue. Mike Mossman, the noted naturalist and an Empire-Sauk Chapter member in Sauk County, WI wrote “We’re fortunate here at Stumphenge (his family property) to have a family of three that works well as a team, and with a little extra time on our hands. We’ll continue to burn patches of our property nightly, I think, in suitable pieces, perhaps until we get everything done that we want. It goes slow, with all the needed burn-breaks, but its working so far and we’re honing our team skills. Another advantage of this is that we are working at a scale where we can coddle oak plantings where we are converting some of the prairie to savanna, and can also incorporate plenty of refugia, like for Sedge Wren and perhaps for Sandhill Crane and American Woodcock nests, and who-knows-what-other species.”
We all remain hopeful that we will be able to get back out there in the fall, and certainly in the spring of 2021!
by The Prairie Enthusiasts | Apr 7, 2020 | News
Introducing a new phenology series. Pat Trochlell, author of ‘This Week in the Driftless Area’ will bring us on a virtual tour of what is happening in our native habitat through her new column. We hope to post this series weekly on our TPE Facebook page, found at https://www.facebook.com/ThePrairieEnthusiasts/ Look for her updates on Thursday afternoons. Pat’s inspiration comes from her career as a wetland ecologist with the Wisconsin DNR. Pat and her husband, Ken Wade, live near and are stewards of TPE’s 30-acre Parrish Oak Savanna, a diverse woodland ecosystem of 240 native species.
Prairie smoke emerging at Moely Prairie, Prairie du Sac, WI. Photo by Amy Chamberlain
This Week in the Driftless Area #1 – 31 March 2020
Hazelnuts are now blooming. Look for these shrubs in oak savannas and oak woodlands. The male and female flowers are separate. Male flowers are drooping catkins. Female flowers occur toward the ends of branches. Female flowers are tiny but brilliant – red tentacle-like pistils which open to pick up pollen drifting from the male catkins. Female flowers are less than ¼ inch in size, and are best observed with a hand lens.
Equisetum species are also known as horsetails or scouring rush. A species we often see, Equisetum hyemale, remains green throughout the year, but the green color changes. In winter, it is dull olive but in a single day it can brighten up to a true kelly green, which happened this past week.
Winter Wrens are migrating through southern Wisconsin now. Look for them in low brushy areas, often near streams. Their song is a long, complex series of beautiful musical trills. It is certain to lift spirits if you are lucky enough to hear it.
It’s the time of year when many species of birds are first observed migrating to and through the state. Look for those that pass through, like the Winter Wren, and also those that will stay and nest. Watch for breeding bird behavior, like Wood Ducks landing in large oak trees and checking for possible nest cavities.
Frogs are starting to sing. Check out any shallow ponds, which warm faster. Chorus frogs and spring peepers are vocal when the water temperature rises above around 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
This Week in the Driftless Area #2 – 7 April 2020
Warm spring temperatures have lead to more plants emerging. Early wildflowers of the prairies and oak woodlands are starting to bloom. Early buttercups (Ranunculus fascicularis) and pasqueflower (Anemone patens) are blooming in prairies and round-lobed hepatica (Anemone americana) and bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis) are blooming in woodlands (see my photo above). Early blooming woodland wildflowers are called spring ephemerals because they need to bloom before the trees leaf out to take advantage of the light. They become dormant later in the growing season.
Bloodroot flowers emerge before the leaves. They are in the poppy family and have large white flowers with petals in multiples of four (see the picture I took at left). Bloodroot is named for the red-orange juice in its roots and stems that was historically used medicinally and as a dye.
Many sedges of the Carex genus also emerge early. Early bloomers include Richardson’s sedge (Carex richardsonii) and Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica). The new green leaves of these and other sedges are nutritious and are often eaten by grazers – from deer to mice. Grazing in general doesn’t harm the plants.
Look for DeKay’s brownsnakes (Storeria dekayi), which are active now, brought out by the warm weather. They often sun in the middle of paths and roadways. Unfortunately, they are most often seen after an encounter with a bike or car. This species inhabits a variety of habitats from prairies to wetlands.
