Dickcissels in the prairie

 

A Dickcissel (Spiza americana) between bouts of song. The exuberant singers are everywhere at Kankakee Sands, a large prairie restoration project in northwest Indiana owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy. I just spent the better part of five days there and in almost every place, the Dickcissel song was the most conspicuous part of the soundscape. This was very cool to someone who spends most of their time in Ohio, where the little "prairie cardinal" (they're in the same family, Cardinalidae) is on the periphery of its range and not very common.

Naturally I turned my lens to the boisterous songsters, which typically perched on fence wires or posts. Like the one above. That's OK, but not really what I had in mind for a perch. Especially in a huge prairie teeming with native flora, including many species that don't make it as far east as Ohio. Although, regarding the above image, the bokeh is to die for. And good bokeh (background quality) is extremely import in photography.

I came across a nice colony of Compass Plant (Silphium laciniatum), and unsurprisingly a Dickcissel had staked it as part of its turf. This was the shot to have! A Dickcissel singing atop a stem of this spectacular prairie plant. Compass Plant is a giant member of the sunflower family, towering to 8-10 feet. The deeply cut leaves are distinctive, and orient themselves on a north-south axis, at least on sunny days. This is said to help the plant reduce the radiation it receives by keeping the broad portion of the leaf away from the direct rays.