Wednesday, September 16, 2015

Bad news for the Tallows.....

I finally got Clearcast sprayed over fifty-two acres of the property.  Clearcast is a SePRO product that as I understand it was invented to kill undesired weeds in rice ponds. It is an over the counter (don't need an applicators license to purchase) herbicide approved for applications in wetlands. Farmers and others started noticing that when they would have it flown onto their rice production areas that the Tallow Trees/ Chicken Trees ( Triadica sebifera) around the perimeter would suffer heavy loss, while the native trees for the most part were unharmed. Tests were done and sure enough only a few native species showed leaf burn and mostly in saplings but  a high mortality in the invasive Chinese Tallow. I purchased 26 gallons of the chemical through an enrollment with US Fish and Wildlife , Partners for Wildlife Program (Andy Dolan).  We flew the stuff on yesterday September 15, 2015 and will post more later showing the results. The chemical is very pricy  but for the amount of Tallow I had per acre and the amount of time I was spending backpack spraying individual trees I am hoping this will put a huge dent in the stems per acre and cut back on my labor so I can spend more time enjoying the place as well as working towards a better percentage of natives vs. invasives on the place. We'll see.




Monday, September 14, 2015

Fall birds are arriving !

More pics on " The Birds" page......

Blackburnian Warbler, Sept 13,2015


Blackburnian Warbler, Sept 13,2015
 
Bell's Vireo, September 13, 2013
Yellow Warbler, August 26, 2015







Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Prairie Plots Coming Alive !!!


Little Bluestem, Big Bluestem, and Eastern Gamma Grass are popping up from seed and clumps planted last winter. An initial plant or two of Rattlesnake Master have been spotted. A solitary Blazing Star (see below) and lot's I have not identified yet that were not there last year. I think the plots are not doing bad considering they have not been burned yet. Also in a patch of Big Bluestem I planted from clumps last year had an interesting insect (see below). Atop every seed stem of the Big Bluestem was the insect pictured below. It was not found anywhere else in the plot.  I don't know what it is yet but if you know, drop me a line. Check out the Prairie page for more pics.

Blazing Star August 26, 2016

Owl-fly found atop every Big Bluestem.