Visit to Kishwauketoe Nature Conservancy - By Emily Stone

The below article was originally posted 8/29/2026 on Emily Stone's Natural Connections on Substack. Thank you, Emily for permission to share here:

On August 19 and 20, I had the pleasure of leading some programs in and exploring the Kishwauketoe Nature Conservancy in Williams Bay, WI. I had visited once before, in 2019 when I was giving talks about my second Natural Connections book. Now with book #3 out, it was time to visit again!

My deepest gratitude goes out to Jim and Roberta Killian and the entire staff and board of Kishwauketoe for hosting me so generously, and for their amazing work protecting and restoring this beautiful place!

Below are a few of the highlights.

On the morning of August 19, I led a “Kish Kids” program. It had rained earlier that morning, and all the spider webs were glistening with drops! We spotted this Yellow Garden Spider first thing, and then the kids pointed out every spider after that! Of course there were questions about the white zigzag in the spider’s web. Luckily, Larry Weber had just talked about this in a Friday Field Notes lecture he gave at the Cable Natural History Museum earlier in August. The “stabilimentum” he thinks is to prevent birds and other beings who are too big to be prey from running into the web and ruining it.

Potter’s Grass Spider

On a lonely milkweed plant along the trail we found several Monarch Butterfly eggs. Luckily, farther down the trail there were several bigger patches of milkweed, too.

A child found this snail and it was such a delight to observe on my hand! At first I didn’t think they were alive, then they popped out and crawled around!

When the snail pooped on my hand and I got really excited, the kids thought I was a little weird. But I got to explain that snail poop from near their heads, because that’s all that pokes out of their shell.

Fascinated by the snail…

Pale Indian Plantain is more abundant at Kishwauketoe than anywhere else in the state! And they didn’t plant it. They just removed the invasive species and it popped right up from seeds in the soil.

Much of Kish is an oak savannah, and these galls made by the Lobed Oak Gall Wasp were abundant. Although we know it’s made by the larvae of this wasp, the adult wasps have not been described! (according to Wikipedia and the Gallformers website). This seems plausible to me, since there are SO MANY gall-forming insects out there, and most are very small.

This black-and-gold bumblebee was huge! I’m guessing she’s a queen.

There was a lovely patch of pale gentian. And a goldenrod soldier beetle adding a spot of color!

While Jim and Don gave me the tour they were constantly describing how open patches of woodland like this one were crowded with thickets of buckthorn not too long ago. Staff and volunteers have done an amazing job of removing buckthorn and restoring fire to this landscape.

My favorite encounter of the entire visit was with this little guy. I’ll be writing more about him, soon!