If you’re a podcast listener and on the lookout for prairie-related content, I’m a guest on two different podcasts that came out this week. The first is The Prairie Pod, a terrific podcast sponsored by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. On the episode I was part of, Megan, Mike, and I talked about habitat heterogeneity – why it’s important and how to create it. The second podcast is called Science for the Rest of Us and host Alex McKiernan and I covered just about everything you could imagine related to prairies in an hour and a half.

In other news, my wife Kim is training for an ultramarathon later this fall. Last weekend, I drove her to and from southeast Kansas so she could do some long training runs on the rocky trail the race will take place on. While she did her obscenely long trail runs, I wandered much more slowly around with my camera, trying to find something to photograph. The dense woodland along the trail and the weedy, brushy habitats nearby didn’t provide much for flowers or pollinators, but spiders were all over the place. That was ok with me, I like spiders just fine.

Below, you’ll see photos of some of the little friends I ran into. Kim ran into many more – literally – while she was running the trail. She had to comb all the silk and detritus out of her hair afterward (her reward for being the first out on the trail each morning!) My encounters were much less dramatic, both for me and the spiders. I know not everyone is a fan of spiders, but I think they’re beautiful and fascinating creatures. I can’t identify most of the species, but I’m guessing some of you will be able to.

My post on our August 12 prescribed fires generated a lot of interest and comments. I’m glad the post was interesting to people and I was once again gratified by the tone and content of the comments. This blog has over 5,000 subscribers and many others that read it, and yet I’ve had incredibly few problematic comments and commenters over the years. Thank you for that.

Since there was so much interest, I thought I’d provide a quick update on the fire today. The photos here were all taken earlier today. We’ve put up some small exclosures that will help us gauge the impact of the immediate grazing on the vegetation – both this fall and into next year – and will be doing some quantitative evaluation of woody plant impacts. Those results will have to wait, but these photos can at least give you a brief look at how the burned areas look 11 days after the fire. All these photos are from the second unit we burned last week, a former cropland planted to high-diversity prairie in 1994.

I’ll try to continue updates as the year goes along. Thanks again for the productive discussion that has arisen around last week’s post. We’re all experimenting and learning, so the conversation is productive for me and I hope it’s helpful to you as well. I really do appreciate this community.