We took another drive through part of the Pawnee Grasslands today. Beautiful mid-summer day, we got a nice early start in order to beat the heat of the day. The sun was strong, but there was a nice breeze blowing for most of our drive which kept things cool enough. We saw a wide variety of birds of prey, and lots of them, on our drive. There has been quite a bit of rain in some of the areas we drove through, quite a bit of standing water and flooded marshy areas, which means lots of bugs and birds, and we saw plenty of both.
The prickly pear which were blooming so profusely about this time last month are finished flowering, and the wild sunflowers which were just beginning to bud are now in full flower, mostly along the roadsides. Didn't get any sunflower pictures, but did get a few of some other interesting blooms:
Mexican Hat flowers were thick along the roadsides in some areas
These are tiny plants with very interesting looking buds
Rocky Mtn Bee flowers were blooming in abundance
No idea what these white flowers are, but they are growing along the trenches we saw being dug last fall for fiber-optic cables. The plants stand out because they are so prolifically growing in a line, closer observation shows them growing out of the trenches, which were left mostly uncovered.
A deceptively beautiful plant with some serious spikes--a thistle??
one of the flower buds...
and lastly, a thistle bud ready to bloom...
interesting fence we saw on the drive
