On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Albatrossity has gifted us with another installment of Spring in Flyover Country. The third one will be next week. ~WaterGirl
Albatrossity
Here’s the next installment of images and information from the Flint Hills of Kansas, aka flyover country.
Spring is proceeding regardless, as avian migrants leave here, pass through, or return for the summer. The controlled burning season is mostly past us now, although there are still a few smoke columns on the horizon most days, and the Swainson’s Hawks, freshly back from the pampas, patrol the fire lines and pounce on any rodent or snake fleeing the flames. Trees are flowering, birds are singing, and all in all it can feel like a normal spring when you are out in the natural world. I recommend it, if it is possible in your part of the galaxy.

The last installment featured a vista of a lone bur oak in a Flint Hills pasture, entitled “Waiting for the fire”. The fire got here. So here’s the before-and-after. The after image shows you why these hills are still covered in tall grass prairie. The soil is very thin and full of sharp flinty rocks that dissuaded early settlers from plowing it up. The rich soils of Illinois, the erstwhile “Prairie State” had no such impediments to the plow, and that is why prairie disappeared from that state almost entirely. Tallgrass prairie is an endangered ecosystem; compared to the iconic endangered ecosystem, old-growth forests of the Pacific Northwest, it has been reduced in size to a much greater extent. I feel fortunate to live here.

The Konza Prairie Biological Station, a few miles south of Manhattan, is a research enterprise devoted to the study of the interactions of two major ecological drivers that help maintaining tallgrass prairies – fire and grazing. There are approximately 250 bison on that station, and they are pretty much unconcerned about fires. They’ve lived with fire for a long time.

Singing Eastern Meadowlark. Our winter mixed meadowlark flocks (both Eastern and Western Meadowlarks) have dispersed, and the Eastern Meadowlarks are singing and hoping and looking pretty fine.

Male Tree Swallow – Flocks of swallows have also returned from the south. Our earliest arrivals are mostly Tree Swallows, but Barn Swallows and Cliff Swallows have also arrived now.

Swamp Sparrow – Sparrows are also passing through in good numbers, most of them spend the summer further north and we only have spring and fall to appreciate them. Swamp Sparrows are regular but rare here in spring, and I was glad to find this one.

BGGN singing – The feisty and ebullient Blue-gray Gnatcatchers are back, and this male pretty much ignored me as I angled to get a better shot of his singing and foraging in a low tree. These are common summer residents here. When I was banding birds I lived in fear of getting one in the mistnet. They are feisty and scrappy and it is very easy for a person with fat fingers (like me) to fumble them while getting them out of the net. Those tiny little legs are thinner than toothpicks, and very easy to snap if they are fighting you as you try to extract them.

Male Common Yellowthroat – One of our earliest migrant warblers, and a common summer resident here, and north of here as well. I think this one was just passing through, he was not singing and seemed very intent on foraging and skulking.

Male Eastern Bluebird – I found this guy in a flowering crab apple tree, and he was cooperative enough to stay there for a portrait on Easter weekend.
Mary G
Amazing. Your birds always have such personality. Are the fires natural, from lightning, or set by farmers?
Rob
What a nice way to start the week, seeing Albatrossity’s bird photographs.
David Evans
Those are lovely, and I found your comments on the fire very informative. The swallow is my favorite image – so simple in form and color.
Just One More Canuck
Great pictures – the Eastern Meadowlark looks like an opera singer on stage
Albatrossity
@Mary G: These days the ranchers generally burn their pastures on purpose; sometimes a wildfire starts when some idiot flicks a cigarette out of a car window, however. Historically they were probably ignited by lightning, in late summer or early fall. There is evidence that Native American tribes also set fires so that the new nutritious and easily palatable grasses would attract the bison herds.
Fair Economist
Beautiful photo essay! The bur oak pairing is like something out of Monet.
JPL
Lovely!
Sotto voce
My great grandparents and grandparents farmed/ranched in the Flint Hills a little further south from you. The farm is still in the family, although who knows for how long. It’s a beautiful country and I miss seeing the wide open spaces as I’ve joined the coastal elites.
HinTN
I can hear the birds singing through my closed windows this morning. It’s below 40F here but expected to get to 60F with full sunshine, something we haven’t seen much lately. That didn’t deter the Rosebreasted Grosbeaks from showing up yesterday. Hooray, they are such beautiful birds.
Thanks for the continuing intro to your part of flyover country.
marklar
How did you get the gnatcatcher to stay perched for a shot? They’re maddening to photograph.
And I love the tree-swallow pose!
Thanks for sharing.
JeanneT
Beautiful; thank you!
OzarkHillbilly
I once rescued a loon from a commercial fishing net he had become entangled in. He was very calm and cooperative at all stages of the rescue, from pulling him up out of the water and cutting the net, the boat ride back to the dock, carrying him to a table, to the snip by snip cutting of the net and pulling it away…
I kept a hand on his head every second and for the 10-15 minutes it took, he never once resisted my ministrations. When I had cut and pulled away the last strand, I took my hand off his head and started to step back. I say started because I was only a quarter step into the move when I had to leap back as his head, with that very sharp pointy beak, flashed towards my thigh. He missed but before I had landed he had flopped off the table and was flopping* across the dock towards the water. Off the dock he went.
I swear, as he went over the edge, I saw a wing tip come out and a middle feather expose itself just before he went into the water never to be seen again.
*Loons can walk, kind of, sort of, but because their legs are so far back on their bodies it is difficult for them. This guy wasn’t even bothering. He was in a hurry.
Nelle
Thank you. I would like every Monday to start this way, with bird photos. I love the sky and prairie shots as a gal born and raised in Kansas does.
OzarkHillbilly
Oh goody. That means ours will be here today or tomorrow.
Dorothy A. Winsor
These are amazing prairie pictures. When we moved there from Michigan, which is tree territory, it took me a long time to adjust my eye to see what was there.
Laura Too
I can tune out so much looking at these. I hear the breeze and the birds…what a lovely way to start the week. Thank you!
John in Park Hill
Wow – nice pictures! I had a partial cross-country bicycle tour planned in June that included the Flint Hills Trail in Kansas. I’m even more sad now that I won’t be able to….it’s a very underappreciated part of the country. Hoping for next year! And now I know why there were fires in that area as I whizzed by on I-70 in years past.
jnfr
Wonderful pictures. Thank you.
MelissaM
Your photos are always amazing! thank you for sharing.
Swallows are such beautiful birds. Their nests, on the other hand– Bird related, we again have robins trying to build a nest on our porch column, which is barely a robin’s width. Bird-brained, indeed.
Steeplejack
@MelissaM:
The standing order at Sighthound Hall now is to enter through the garage, because a robin is nesting on the porch light next to the front door. Not a big deal with only my brother in residence for the time being.
WaterGirl
In this On the Road, from the first bird to the last, the birds are so expressive. I had no idea.
arrieve
Beautiful, and so welcome these gray days, Albatrossity! I especially love that swallow.
sherparick
A great way to begin each day. Thoughts of Alain. A picture of what Illinois prairie looked liked can be found near Chicago at the Midewein National Tall Grass Prairie on land preserved from the old Army Joliet Ammunition Plant (an interesting take on not beating one’s swords into plows, but instead wild flowers).![]()
Also, the Nachusa Grasslands Preserve was started about 40 years ago and you can find images like these:
In Alain’s spirit.
WaterGirl
@sherparick: If you were trying to add images, they didn’t take. If you send them to me by email, I can add them to your comment in the thread.
joel hanes
Iowans industriously converted all but 3% of their prairies and wetlands to farmland.
Then, starting in the 80s, they realized a few of the costs, and that maybe keeping around some of the species native to the state might be a good thing. A minor fad for native plants took hold, and convinced many county conservation departments that putting roadsides back into native flora could reduce their budget for control of thistle and other invasive weeds.
In 1990, prairie activists convinced the Federal government to purchase an entire small river valley ESE of Des Moines (fittingly, directly south of Prairie City) from willing buyers, and to undertake restoration of a patch of tallgrass prairie. The result is the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge, which comprises more than 8500 acres. Thirty years of restoration work, including periodic deliberate burning, have created a lovely patch of what Iowa once was. The wildflowers in late spring and early summer are glorious, and prairie birds and pollinators that were growing rare have made it home. The refuge has 20 elk*, and a herd of fifty bison, bred from carefully-chosen stock that genetic testing showed had no admixture of cattle genes, and I think they’ve got prairie chickens now. Very nice unobtrusive visitor’s center, with working labs and ongoing research.
If you visit the refuge, you might well follow up with a visit to Goldie’s Drive-In, in Prairie City, where you can get ice cream or a generously-sized example of the Iowa pork tenderloin sandwich while admiring the view of the grain elevators.
I like to go in the late afternoon, and to linger — pretty much everyone leaves when the visitor’s center closes, and one can spend the sunset hour on a hilltop hearing nothing but the wind and the cries of birds.
—-
* I believe that what Americans call elk are close to what Europeans call “red deer”, and what Europeans call “elk” are close to what Americans call moose.
Origuy
Thanks, I especially like the meadowlark.
I was in Laramie, WY one August and decided to see Fort Laramie, which is nowhere near the city of Laramie. As I was driving north, it began to get really smoky. There was a grass fire in the Oglala National Grassland, 50 miles away in Nebraska. By the time I got to Fort Laramie, it was like being in a fog bank, only brown. The fort was still open, so I went ahead and looked around.
frosty
Beautiful pictures! I’ve been trying to take bird pictures for the last few weeks and now I can appreciate how difficult it is. Nice nob!
stinger
“Singing and hoping” and wishing and praying?
Gorgeous photography, informative text, and all-around entertaining! A spectacular OTR entry, Albatrossity!
Parents doing home schooling could get a good start on a daily biology/geography lesson right here on BJ/OTR.
WaterGirl
@stinger: I know! Is it really fair for him to be an amazing photographer and a great writer?
Since Albatrossity shares it all with us, the answer is surely yes.
J R in WV
Wonderful pictures. When I take bird pics, I have to ask the Jackal commentariat about what kinda bird is this? Same for some flowers, what kinda flower is this? And the Jackals most always come through…
Thanks Albatrossity, wonderful work as always! We have so much beauty so close to us. Last time we drove home from AZ, via Colorado, we drove east from Pueblo CO on two lane roads through Kansas. There were surprising small town museums, half filled with pioneer stuff, half filled with great fossils from chalk outcrops exposed on creek banks.
A Wonderful drive.
Pulled over by a nice Deputy, who couldn’t see the temp license plate taped inside a very tinted read window of the Ford truck. He was a Kansas farmer making a cash flow with a second regular job as a LEO. Beautiful hills and swales where it was too steep or rocky to plow.
cckids
Lovely pictures, as always! Thank you.
I’m reminded of growing up in Nebraska, that expanse of sky.
Nine-Mile Prairie in Lincoln, NE is a great tallgrass park, (about 250 acres) run by the university; it’s been allowed to be native since 1968. A great, educational place – most of the public schools take various grades there to study biology, plants, history, or to just let the kids experience the quiet and write poetry. It’s so peaceful.
frosty
@J R in WV: What route did you use through Kansas? I could use an alternative to I-70.
Albatrossity
@frosty: Several alternatives for I-70 exist, depending on whether your destination is northerly or southerly. I like US-36 across the northern tier of counties, and that takes you to Colorado and points north.
A good southerly route would be to take I-70 to the Ellsworth exit (KS-156) and go south from there. It takes you past Cheyenne Bottoms, an impressive wetland, and if you really want to dawdle, you can go a bit further south to Quivira NWR.
If you want to go west from there, US56 and then US50 are good routes to CO and points south. A gorgeous road is US160 across the Red Hills in southern KS. Not a lot of towns on that route, but gorgeous scenery.
frosty
@Albatrossity: Thanks! Gorgeous scenery is always appreciated.
PS Nice job not Nice nob LOL
way2blue
Great photos. And great explanations. Thanks for the respite…
JustRuss
Great pics. Our swallows recently returned, occasionally a gang of them will descend on my backyard, swooping around for half an hour or so. If I watch them through the garage window they’ll pass within a foot or so of me, it’s fascinating to watch them fly from so close up.
madonna of the prairie
What a lovely surprise to see YOUR photgraphs of our beloved Flint Hills & avian friends, right here in our living room in central New York! Your photography has always pleased the eye, but these are outstanding! Your signature was the giveaway, but when you called the cigarette flicking source of a wildfire an idiot, I knew it was you! Please say hello to all the peeps in NFHAS for us won’t you?
Albatrossity
@madonna of the prairie: Thanks, Madonna! Good to hear from you. Please give my regards to Paul!