I’m already missing my square meter plot and that whole project, but I’m soldiering on and finding other fun photographic opportunities. It’s been fun to watch the growing season jump into full speed, despite really dry conditions. We’ve gotten some good rain across much of the state this last week or so, but most of the state is still in drought conditions. It’s a good thing prairies are so resilient!
Here are a few of my favorite photos from the last few weeks.
The first several photos below were taken within my 2025 photo project area at my family prairie. Pussytoes (Antennaria neglecta) was going to seed earlier this month and I spent part of a pleasant morning admiring the interplay between the light and those fuzzy seedheads.
The rest of these photos were taken at The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies. The first two come from a wetland restoration effort I led many years ago. We converted a sandpit lake (from sand and gravel dredging) to a shallow wetland with backwater wetlands and a meandering stream. It’s still one of the most gratifying projects I’ve worked on, despite a constant flow of invasive plants coming in from upstream.
As the sun dropped into haze-filled horizon one evening, I played around with various subjects to put in front of that sun. Here are two of my favorites.
I think all of our migratory grassland birds have arrived back in our Platte River Prairies. At least some dragonflies seem to be here, and I’ve heard people are starting to see monarchs in eastern Nebraska, though I’ve not seen my first yet. Temperatures are rising and summer is on the way!
The Prairie Ecologist 
I laughed out loud when I saw that bullfrog! Love your photography. Thanks.
My favorite thing about prairies are the surprises and unexpected discoveries! We are in west central Missouri and we had a very wet spring this year. So last month (April) we had an explosion of shooting stars like I haven’t seen in 10 years! And they popped up in a field that I had never seen shooting stars before! And now, in May, grass pink orchids popping up all over … one area had over 300! And the paintbrush was also amazing. I can already see that the pp coneflowers will be a bumper crop this year- they are starting to put their heads up- and I also see the blazing stars will be much more than ever before. I see this as a once in ten year occurrence to have this many forbs – the sudden beauty of thousands of changing elements floors me – and fills me with awe. I anticipate how the prairie wildlife will follow with abundance. Prairies are magic.