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Summer in Kansas, a photo diary of nature [1]

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Date: 2022-07-21

Welcome to Street Prophets Coffee Hour, artfully located where politics and religion and nature and life intersect. Sit down, have a cuppa and a cookie, or three, and join us.

Climate change came to northeast Kansas several years ago. In 2000, I had a wealth of wildlife on my farm, native plants that were rare but a real treat and birds that were both resident and migratory. The pond was filled with fish and was home to several species of native turtles. Green herons nested there; great blue herons fed there every day. Ducks passing through would stop for a night’s rest. Snakes. (I never minded the snakes; in fact, I’m rather protective of them.) One plant has done well, though: poison ivy. It’s exploded all over the shaded areas. I understand this is a nation-wide thing, too. I pull it out when it’s in my living space and work around it in the wooded areas.

So what have I lost? Those delicate wild prairie roses, for one thing. Oxalis. Arrowhead, with the tall panicles of waxy white flowers. (I think someone uphill and upstream used a weed killer that took out both the arrowhead and the cattails, home to red-winged blackbirds and American bitterns.) Several species of owls, and most of the individuals of the one remaining species. (Humans again; I’m pretty sure more than one person has put out poison for mice. One mouse that’s eaten the poison will kill an owl or hawk or eagle.) Hawks are rarer by far.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/21/2110594/-Summer-in-Kansas-a-photo-diary-of-nature

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