Fire-bison, the Great Spirit and Other Missouri Prairies Features

I'm trying to decide what's cooler. Fire-managed prairies, or bison-managed prairies. Whoa. What if there were fire-bison? Debate over.

Fire Bison. My new favorite animal.

Take a look at this drone-generated video of fire at Tucker Prairie, a research site managed by the University of Missouri. In General Ecology at MU, I learned about secession from Dr. Faaborg and my awesome TA Alicia Burke, and observed (one square meter by one square meter, a hundred times, for six hours), how burns change plant composition over one, two, five and 30 years. It's cooler than it sounds, guys.

So in honor of all those prairies about to rise like so many Phoenix, here's a look at more tallgrass havens bumpin' around the Show-Me State. Descriptions come from Public Prairies of Missouri, a Missouri Department of Conservation book published in 1999 (i.e., don't blame me if a species is extinct or the conservation area added more land or something...though I did try to check it for you). The book features 72 sites, but before you get excited, remember:

"More than 13 million acres of tallgrass prairie once covered more than one-third of Missouri’s landscape. Today, less than 65,000 acres remain." - Missouri State Parks

Womp womp.

But seriously, if those numbers disturb you (and you'd like to make sure kids aren't saying Little House on the What? when you tell them about Laura Ingalls Wilder), visit the Missouri Prairie Foundation website for opportunities to help. Every prairie is important, from smallest to largest, from cutesy names to serious bird-watching. So saddle up that prairie schooner and venture out to these sites!

What is a murmuration?

Just watch. It's the best way to learn.

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Dickcissles: panorama of SOUND!

The tall grasses are chirping!  It's a dickcissle flock!

My annotation from this weekend in Bates County, Mo., noted a "choot choot chweet chweet!" from this bird that took longer than it should have to identify. WhatBird contends they make a "dick-dick-dick-cissel"* and The Cornell Lab of Ornithology says their song is a "simple, dry, 'dick, dick, ciss, ciss, ciss.' Call a dry 'chek.' Flight call a short, buzzy "fpppt," like a Bronx cheer."** Okay, so dickcissles sound more like campers plucking string instruments rather than a stadium rock show, but if you stand in a middle of a field, the call and response encroaches from every direction and fan sout in a fading aural perspective. Very beautiful.

Here's my video.  This one is better.

Reminds me of Iron Horse's bluegrass cover of "World at Large." [listen] [buy]

* cliche'
** What's a Bronx cheer?