Getting down at the Yellow Quill Prairie
The Yellow Quill Prairie Preserve on a sunny day (Photo by Diana Bizecki Robson)
Last week I started my field season by getting down on my hands and knees to collect plants and pollinators at the Yellow Quill Prairie Preserve south of Brandon, which is owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy of Canada. While that may not...
Fescue findings
A bumblebee on field locoweed. (Photo by Diana Bizecki Robson)
As I near the end of my two years of pollinator research in the fescue prairie, I’ve been wondering what it all means. In particular I’ve been thinking about how the pollinator communities in fescue prairies are different than in the...
Close encounters of the wild kind
A black bear located where I normally like to see them: far away. (Photo by Dr. Diana Bizecki Robson)
This summer, I spent a good chunk of my field trips to the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s (NCC’s) fescue prairie preserves being bear-anoid. Although I saw several black bears last year, they were all solitary and a fair distance away....
How do I love the prairie? Let me count the ways
All the ticks at the Elk Glen preserve lined up on Diana's knee for one of her famous airplane rides.(Photo by Diana Bizecki Robson)
Once again I will be spending a few weeks out at the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s fescue prairie preserves south of Riding Mountain National Park, studying plant-pollinator interactions. The beginning of June marked my first trip of the...
Where have all the pollinators gone?
Research site (Photo by Diana Robson)
After a summer filled with ticks, mosquitoes and biting flies, I was ready for a pest-free pollinator survey at the Nature Conservancy of Canada (NCC) properties near Riding Mountain National Park this September. Autumn field work can be quite...
Pollinators (and people predators) galore
Bee on Hedysarum (Photo by Diana Bizecki Robson)
After the relative calm of my June field work on Nature Conservancy of Canada land near Riding Mountain National Park, I was kept very busy observing insects in July and August. In total I saw approximately 64 insect species making over 1,200...
Wolves and cougars and bears, oh my!
Beautiful view (Photo by Diana Bizecki Robson)
For most of my career I have studied prairie plants, mainly because prairies are among the rarest ecosystems in Canada owing to the fact that they’ve been almost completely converted into cropland. As a result, I have never had to worry...
Winter without central heat: How wildlife on the prairies survives
Three-flowered avens (Photo © Manitoba Museum)
During frigid winter days I find myself marvelling at how wild plants and animals manage to survive the cold temperatures. As my current area of study involves flowering plants and their insect pollinators, these are the organisms that I will...
