Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
5,053
result(s) for
"Prairie animals."
Sort by:
Prairie food chains
\"Vibrant photographs and carefully leveled text introduce readers to the prairie biome and the food chains that operate there.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Prairie Peninsula
The prairie grassland biome covers the heartland of North America with an eastward extension called the Prairie Peninsula. Primarily composed of tallgrass prairie, this biome lies between the shortgrass prairies of the west and the eastern deciduous forest region and includes the states of Illinois, Indiana, southeastern Wisconsin, and Ohio. With text by coauthors Gary Meszaros and Guy L. Denny and striking photographs by Meszaros, The Prairie Peninsula examines the many prairie types, floristic composition, and animals that are part of this ecosystem. It took only 50 years for 150 million acres of tallgrass prairie to disappear under the steel plow, transforming the Prairie Peninsula into fields of corn and wheat. Today, only a few thousand acres of this endangered ecosystem remain in small parcels, some just a few acres each. The second half of the 19th century brought the mass slaughter of prairie wildlife. By 1900, like the prairie they roamed, the plains bison, gray wolf, and eastern elk became extirpated east of the Mississippi River. The Prairie Peninsula also tells the story of the early settlers and the hardships they endured. Thousands died of milk sickness and malaria, with prairie fires sending flames 30 feet into the air and stretched across the horizon, destroying everything in their path. Today, many of these pioneers lie buried in cemeteries comprising prairie remnants, fragments of the primeval land they tried to tame. The authors investigate these and other surviving prairie remnants and current efforts to save these traces of original North American grassland. Both Gary Meszaros and Guy L. Denny have traveled extensively throughout the Midwest, studying the animal and floristic composition of original prairie remnants.
eBook
Seasons of the Tallgrass Prairie
A respected author and scholar, Paul A. Johnsgard has spent a lifetime observing the natural delights of Nebraska's woodlands, grasslands, and wetlands. Seasons of the Tallgrass Prairie collects his musings on Nebraska's natural history and the issues of conservation facing our future. Johnsgard crafts essays featuring snow geese, owls, hummingbirds, and other creatures against the backdrop of Great Plains landscapes. He describes prairie chickens courting during predawn hours and the calls of sandhill cranes; he evokes the magic of lying upon the prairie, hearing only the sounds of insects and the wind through the grasses. From reflections following a visit to a Pawnee sacred site to meditations on the perils facing the state's finite natural resources, Seasons of the Tallgrass Prairie celebrates the gifts of a half century spent roaming Nebraska's back roads, trails, and sometimes-forgotten places.
eBook
To See Them Run
To See Them Run explores how and why Great Plains hunters have chased coyotes with greyhounds and other sight hounds since before George Armstrong Custer. Though a well-developed, long-lived, widespread, and undeniably enthralling tradition, the practice remains little known, even to those living in Oklahoma, Nebraska, and South Dakota, where the tradition is common. Coyote coursing, hunting with greyhounds launched from specially made pickup rigs, is a hobby by locals, for locals, and it has remained a quintessentially vernacular enterprise occupying a rung below the Plains' prestige forms of animal training and interaction—namely with horses and cattle. The coyote coursing tradition provides an ideal setting for exploring the relationship between animals and the study of folklore. The book examines the artistry, thrills, values, camaraderie, economy, and controversies of this uncommercialized and never-before-studied vernacular tradition. Through ethnographic photographs and authentic collected commentary from participants, this book uncovers how hunting dogs and coyotes both have shaped and been shaped by human aesthetic sensibilities in ongoing folkloric and biological processes. Author Eric A. Eliason and photographer Scott Squire discover deep and sophisticated local knowledge in a unique interaction with the natural ecologies of the great North American prairie.
eBook
Out on the prairie
Count the animals that live on the prairie from one to ten in a rhyming text modeled after the traditional song Over in the Meadow by Olive A. Wadsworth.
Book