The Regal Fritillary is threatened over much of its range. It is found in prairies and grasslands in the central U.S. And it is a regal looking butterfly. It is large with boldly marked above and below. The big silver white spots on the underside of the dark chocolate colored hindwings is especially beautiful.

I felt very fortunate to find several Regal Fritillaries at the Nachusa Grasslands in northern Illinois. Unfortunately they were in egg-laying mode which meant that they rarely landed on a flower to nectar. They would constantly be on the wing searching for their ground-hugging host plant, the Bird’s-foot Violet on which to lay eggs. So I gave up on photographing one on a flower and instead switched to “wing shooting” mode. I had to manually focus since the autofocus could not lock on to such a small subject, so I prefocused at a certain distance and when the butterfly came in range I just started blasting, hoping to get an acceptably sharp photo. After hundreds of attempts I got a few keepers including this one. It is not a perfect specimen with many wing tears and chunks missing but it is a fair representation of  rare species.

Canon 7D, 400mm f5.6 lens, handheld, ISO 800, f5.6 at 1/2000 second

Prairies are not just grass! And this photo shows the rich diversity of an Illinois tallgrass prairie. I shot it with a super wide 10mm lens from a low angle to dramatize the clouds. I handheld a Galen Rowell 2-stop graduated neutral density filter over the front of the lens to bring the sky down a couple stops and prevent it from blowing out when exposing for the flowers. This image is technically a HDR…A High Dynamic Range photo. It is the result of a single image being processed twice in Aperture (once for the sky and once for the foreground wildflowers) and then combined in Photomatix Pro. I then went back into Photoshop to adjust curves and darken the sky. Finally I brought it back into Aperture to give it final tweeks.

The Tallgrass prairies have mostly disappeared…Only a fraction of the original prairies still exist. Fortunately, most of the remaining tracts are now protected. Groups like The Nature Conservancy and state DNRs are not only protecting the lands but rejuvenating them with prescribed burns and wildflower and grass plantings.

Canon 7D, 10-20mm Sigma lens, 2-stop Galen Rowell graduated neutral density filter, handheld, f16.

While visiting my wife’s parents and sisters in Illinois, I “escaped” one day to a large Nature Conservancy Prairie in northern Illinois. It is near the town of Franklin Grove and is called the Nachusa Grasslands. It had been incredibly hot and humid but this day was relatively “cool” at least by Illinois standards. Much of  the preserve seemed to have been burned that spring which left me wondering if I’d find much. But cresting one of the many rolling hills I heard several singing Henslow’s Sparrows. This is a bird that is quite rare in Minnesota. It has been categorized as “”Endangered” but may be reduced in status to “Threatened” since many more have been found in new locations recently. This increase in Minnesota may be due to large chunks of fallow farmland put into the CRP program (farmers paid to leave some land fallow). You see Henslow’s like brushy fields and prairies with some taller stems and stalks for singing. They are picky about their habitats. But once you find one, you may find several singing males since they are semicolonial.

So it was a real treat to find several cooperative males. I “wasted” a lot of pixels by taking many photos from far away but you need to do this just in case you can’t get close. But I discovered a slick trick…By taking some video footage and recording a singing male with a shotgun microphone, I could play back the video with the camera volume set to max and the Henslow’s would think another male was in his territory! It worked great (but I only did this sparingly, not wanting to disturb them too much). I got some great head-on shots of him singing but I really wanted a shot from the back with the Henslow’s head thrown back and singing. This would show the more colorful back feathers than the lightly marked breast feathers.

Note his subtle greenish head markings. Their song is a two to three syllable buzz…Almost insect like.

Many folks are surprised to learn that the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker is a real bird and not just a derogatory name for a cowardly cowboy. You can see from the photo that it is a woodpecker but the yellow belly is not prominent. The name sapsucker comes from its habit of drilling holes in neat little rows on birch and maple trees in spring. Sweet sap oozes from the tiny wounds and the sapsucker laps up the sugary treat with a brush-tipped tongue. They actually have a route of trees that they make the rounds of, taking in not only sap but also eating insects attracted to the sap. Hummingbirds will also visit oozing sapsucker holes to eat the sap and insects.

I found this nest cavity by listening for the sound of the loudly begging young inside. Their loud “cheeps” are like the crying of a hungry baby…The simply want to be fed. The male and female visited the cavity about every 15 minutes or so. This is a male as told by his red throat. His bill is stuffed with ants.

Canon 7D, 400mm lens with 1.4x extender, flash with Better Beamer, tripod.