I ventured out to Springer Basin Wildlife Management Area yesterday. Springer is a rainwater basin wetland – one of many shallow playa wetlands in our area. Like all of those wetlands, Springer Basin is threatened by invasive plants, including reed canarygrass and narrowleaf cattails. Despite my frustration with how quickly those plants swarm across basins, the first photo I took upon stepping carefully onto this frozen wetland was a cattail seed. I couldn’t help myself – it was exquisite.

Once I was already on my hands and knees on the ice, it was easy to keep finding and photographing more cattail seeds. Each one had its own unique beauty and arrangement on the ice.

After a little while, my brain began seeing something else in those seeds. I don’t know if you’ll see it too, but I thought they looked like artistic depictions of cranes. Once I started down that mental road, I couldn’t stop seeing cranes. Rather than fight it, I leaned in and tried to find as many examples as I could. It wasn’t hard, and it took quite a while for me to get bored and move on to other subjects. That will be obvious by the number of photos below…

Photographing ‘seed cranes’ wasn’t all I did during my short exploration of the wetland. I also had some really interesting interactions with leopard frogs, but I’m going to wait until next week to share those. I hope the anticipation won’t keep you from sleeping over the weekend…