Hi Pat! I definitely have some books on prairies that I can recommend! "Island of Grass" by Ellen Wohl is a good one that details the Fromme Prairie open space in Northern Colorado. "Prairie Dog Empire" by Paul A. Johnsgard is another. It mainly centers around the namesake creature but definitely is a good read on grassland ecology as a whole. I think he gets a little overzealous in his swooning over prairie dogs, but otherwise I enjoyed it. Another that I have on my shelf but haven't had a chance to read yet is "The Last Prairie" by Stephen R. Jones. It centers around the grasslands of the Sandhills region in Nebraska. I feel like there is more that I have read but are not coming to mind at the moment. There is one that might be hard to find that gives the account of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, but that is more about the history of the location than the ecology. It's called "Twenty Seven Square Miles by John F. Hoffecker.

I guess growing up here in Colorado (despite the hype, a full half the state is actually flat as a pancake and classified as the shortgrass prairie/steppe ecozone) I never gave it much thought that birds couldn't survive without trees. Here they nest on the ground and sing from the tops of shrubs and fences rather than tree branches. Raptors nest on cliff faces which rise into the sky seemingly from nowhere, the remnants of a prehistoric ocean.

Of course all roads lead to water which is a scarcity in the arid West, and its no coincidence that some 80% of birds species (I think) in Colorado are found in riparian zones which do frequently have trees, such as narrowleaf and Fremont's cottonwoods, and also dense shrub cover. However the "forests" that now line the banks of streams and rivers here are a result of flood control implemented in just the past century and a half.

They also pale in comparison to the actual forests found where you are from. I can walk the entire bredth of a cottonwood gallery in a matter of minutes and come back out the other side to not see another (non human planted) tree for miles and miles and miles. I remember as a kid dad, who was born in Pittsburgh and raised in the South East, would often lament that Colorado was the only place on earth where people actually had to buy trees to put in their yards.

I seem to have gotten a little off topic but I will leave you with a quote that I often tell people who consider the prairie (which at one time was known officially as the "great American desert) a vast empty wasteland "any man can love the mountains, it take a soul to love the prairie."

You should write a book, Zach!

Im really only good for short bursts on an internet forum, haha. Writing an entire book takes a level of organization my brain just doesn't operate on. Plus I have a very limited attention span and get distracted and lose interest very quickly. Then there is the small issue of limited intelligence ; ).

Well then, how about a little booklet? :)

Exactly.