NEBRASKAland Articles

Story and photos by Renae Blum It had been a slow year so far. But not at this moment. Joanne Langabee calls out, “I’ve got an orange and a blue!” Her companion, Holly Hofreiter, responds almost immediately: “I’ve got a Peck’s” — short for Peck’s skipper. One butterfly after another materializes from the prairie grasses at their feet, just seconds apart, but the women aren’t fazed. They continue calling back and forth in a kind of butterfly shorthand, identifying new …

By Julie Geiser Cicada killer wasps will start emerging from the ground anytime, but these docile wasps only have one thing on their minds: seeking out cicadas. Found across the U.S., these native wasps start to appear in mid-to-late July through August in Nebraska. Cicada killer wasps are approximately 2 inches long with black and yellow on their abdomens and amber-colored wings. When you hear male cicadas begin singing to attract their mates, adult cicada killer wasps will start to …

Kearney’s new whitewater park By Eric Fowler Even though he hadn’t used it for years, Dylan Knapp brought his whitewater kayak with him when he moved to Kearney in 2021. At the time, he didn’t have a clue he would be dusting it off, along with his bag of playboating tricks, including flat spins, stern squirts and loops, when the state’s first whitewater park opened in his new home a year later. “I picked the perfect time to move to …

Story and photos by Gerry Steinauer, Botanist As their name implies, each dayflower blossom is fleeting. New flowers that open to greet the rising sun close about noon and wither by dusk. The lovely blue flowers are as delicate as they are short-lived. When rubbed between one’s fingers, their petals quickly disintegrate into a watery ooze. Belonging to the spiderwort family (Commelinaceae), two dayflower species, both growing up to a foot tall, inhabit Nebraska. Slender dayflower (Commelina erecta) is a …

Story and Photos by Chris Helzer Wasps are amazing. No, seriously, they’re startlingly cool. To begin with, there are more than 100,000 wasp species that have been cataloged by science and many more that haven’t. Among all those species, there is incredible variation in size, shape, lifestyle and aggression toward humans. Spoiler alert: Only a tiny percentage of wasps pose any threat to us at all. Categorizing all wasps as aggressive, winged canisters of pain is like categorizing all Husker …

By Tim McNeil It’s always wise to keep your garage door closed and locked at night. And not just at night, but at all hours of the day. Larry Dendinger knows there’s wisdom in safeguarding home possessions and personal safety, but he runs a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week business from his garage. His garage door is always open. Dendinger, 75, owns L&A Bait in southwest Omaha. It’s not the first bait shop he’s owned — Dendinger is an accidental bait store owner. …

Tips for Multi-day Kayaking By Jenny Nguyen-Wheatley Kayak camping is exactly what it sounds like — a unique adventure that combines the best of two worlds. In high school, I was fortunate to spend a week in Alaska with the Girl Scouts, and like a dream come true, we paddled our way around the Kenai Peninsula and camped each night on different beaches. From the tranquility of a kayak, I witnessed marine wildlife from a perspective that would’ve been different …

Story and photos by Gerry Steinauer, Botanist To find roundleaf monkey-flower (Mimulus glabratus), do not look high in the trees. Instead, head to the cold, clear water streams of central and western Nebraska. The plant’s favorite haunts include the slow shallows of spring-fed Sandhills streams and the sandy-bottomed pools of spring-branch canyon streams flowing into the central Niobrara River. Avoid streams where agricultural runoff has muddied the waters: You will be hard pressed to find it there. Often growing partially …

By David L. Bristow, History Nebraska On a clear, hot July day a haze came over the sun,” Addison Sheldon recalled. “The haze deepened into a gray cloud. Suddenly the cloud resolved itself into billions of gray grasshoppers sweeping down upon the earth. The vibration of their wings filled the ear with a roaring sound like a rushing storm. As far as the eye could reach in every direction the air was filled with them. Where they alighted, they covered …

Photos and story by Eric Fowler I try not to set in stone my travel itineraries when I’m on a Nebraskaland assignment. You just never know when you will need to take a detour. That was the case in 2015 on a trip to capture underwater fish photos on the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge. I’d planned on meeting friends for dinner in Valentine, watching the sun set along the Niobrara River, and heading to the refuge the next day. But …