Yes, I’m still spending considerable time staring into my square meter prairie plot at Lincoln Creek Prairie. Yes, I’m still enjoying the sense of exploration and discovery, and still finding new things to enjoy and photograph.

However, in this special edition of the Prairie Ecologist Blog, I’ve decided not to show you the wasps, flies, spiders, and other creatures I’ve been spending time with over the last several weeks. Instead, this post is a celebration of butterfly milkweed seeds.

You may or may not remember that when I first tried this square meter project idea back in 2018, the butterfly milkweed plant in the plot produced a single seed pod. I was shocked and disappointed by that. I also watched that single pod like a hawk, waiting for it to open, because I didn’t want to miss the chance to photograph the seeds when they emerged. Milkweed seeds are in the top 10 (top 5?) favorite macro photography subjects for me. What’s not to like?

Anyway, in my second try at this project (2024), butterfly milkweed was abundantly pollinated and has produced numerous seed pods. They’ve been opening and releasing their cargo during the last several weeks and I’ve been having a ball with my macro lens. The small and large milkweed bugs visiting the plot have also enjoyed the bounty of their favorite food.

Ok, that’s enough insects for this post. This post is not about insects. It’s not about the huge flock of grackles that swirled overhead the other day. It’s definitely not about the little shrew that didn’t let me get close enough for a photo before it scurried into the shadows and disappeared.

This post is about the wonder and majesty of milkweed seeds. In particular, this is a celebration of the butterfly milkweed seeds produced by a single milkweed plant in a single square meter of prairie this year.

Without further commentary, here they are. Enjoy!

As I type this, the wind is howling at 30 miles an hour or more, and is predicted to continue for the next several days. We’ll see if any milkweed seeds remain when I next visit the plot. I sure hope so, but even if they’re gone, it was a fantastic highlight to this year’s square meter photograph project.

I hope you’re all having a terrific autumn and are out exploring the prairie habitat near you. Surely you’ve all been photographing all the milkweed seeds you’re seeing, right? (Except those of you living on the southern half of the planet who are enjoying spring!)

A couple weeks ago, I found myself in Kansas for another of Kim’s ultramarathon races. This time, my son John was also running his first ultra, so I was crewing two people.

(I know, I know, it appears ultramarathon running is contagious, doesn’t it? Don’t worry – I’ve been very careful and have so far avoided catching it, despite repeated exposure to infected people.)

This particular race was on the rocky Elk River Hiking Trail in southeastern Kansas. It’s a site we’ve visited often enough that I’ve developed some favorite spots for photography. You might be surprised by what those favorite spots look like. There’s not a lot of grassland available along the trail, and much of it is pretty heavily infested with invasive plants. I’m sure there are pretty prairies in the vicinity. However, I’m trying to fit photography into prescribed windows of time, so I have to stay close to the aid stations where I meet my runner(s) to hand them food, water, dry socks, and whatever else they need. I

As a result, those small, invaded sites are what I have to work with. And I’ve found some pretty great photographic opportunities in them over the years, actually. On this trip, I was fighting some wind and working in small windows of time, but still managed to enjoy myself.

One of those favorite sites is an abandoned road that leads down to a shallow bit of Elk City Lake. The road is lined with eastern red cedar trees and has both sericea lespedeza and Caucasian bluestem growing up through the cracks in the asphalt. What more could a nature photographer want?

Eastern red cedar is a native tree in North America, but is acts as an invaider because of fire suppression after European colonization. Sericea lespedeza and Caucasian bluestem are non-native and invasive plants that can form big monoculture patches (and are extraordinarily difficult to control/contain). BOOOOO!

On the other hand, there was a lot of insect action on those invasive plants, and as a photographer with limited time, I was happy to use what was before me. My first observation was that the cedar trees were loaded with what I think were western leaf-footed bugs. There were hundreds of them, both adults and nymphs. I’m pretty sure they were feeding on the fruits of the cedars (see the photo below) but most of them seemed to be mainly lounging around.

After returning home, I did some research, but didn’t find mention of eastern red cedar as a food plant for the western leaf-footed bug. That doesn’t necessarily mean much, since my investigation consisted solely of a brief Google search. It does appear the bugs feed on other trees, at least. Plus, I could have my insect identification wrong in the first place, which would make my Google search meaningless. I’d be curious to hear from anyone who has seen this species before, especially if you’ve seen big congregations on cedar trees.

The race was back in late September, and even in southern Kansas, a lot of wildflowers had finished blooming for the year. Sericea lespedeza, though, was still going strong. Whether because of the limited options or because it’s really nutritious, a lot of nectar-feeding insects were hanging out on the invasive lespedeza. Most of those were butterflies. I’ve given up on guessing the identity of skippers, but I recognized some of the other butterfly species.

One of the butterflies I recognized was the American snout butterfly – the first I’ve ever seen in real life. They’re not common in the prairies I most often hang out in, so it was pretty cool to see one, and nice of it to hang around long enough for several photographs. I also photographed a gray hairstreak, which is also pretty, but very familiar to me, so it wasn’t quite as exciting.

The surrounding area did have a few other flowers blooming here and there, including a little patch of broom snakeweed and a native thistle (maybe tall thistle?). Those flowers also had a lot of pollinator activity. The snakeweed was attracting mainly flies and small bees, and the thistle attracted several butterflies during the few minutes I watched it.

I followed the road all the way to the upper reaches of Elk City Lake and found the water all gone. I wandered around on the mostly dry lake floor, which had been free of standing water long enough for lots of little annual grasses and sedges to sprout. I found some cricket frogs and chased them around a little with my camera. There were also lots of carcasses of European carp and some kind of gar. I’m sorry I’m not proficient enough in my dead fish identification to tell you what kind of gar it was.

One of the last photos I took that day is a mystery. It was a cocklebur hanging from a grass leaf in the middle of the abandoned road. The bur was half coated with dried mud, which also appeared to be what was sticking it to the grass leaf.

How did it get there? Was it placed intentionally or did it get rubbed off as a person or other animal brushed past the grass? Because insects are often on my mind, I wondered if there was something living inside the mud or bur, but didn’t open it up because I needed to get to the aid station before Kim did.

Mysteries are always fun, but they’re especially fun when you can figure out the solution. Help?

So, there’s my adventure in the great wilds of southeastern Kansas. I think there are a couple important lessons from the day. One is that even invasive species can provide some value. The species themselves aren’t inherently bad, after all. They’re trying to survive where they are and it’s not their fault they’ve been placed where they are problematic to others (or that there was a change in the people managing their landscape and that most of the new people don’t much like fire). The insects I photographed on the cedar and lespedeza were benefitting from those species, and good for them.

That doesn’t mean, by the way, that sericea lespedeza and eastern redcedar aren’t problematic. Of course they are. But it’s nice to be reminded that there’s some complexity to the way they interact with their surroundings.

The other big lesson is one I’ve learned many times. You can find amazing nature stories and species just about anywhere. I spent a couple hours happily exploring an abandoned road lined with invasive plants. There was plenty to observe and photograph. My square meter photography project, of course, is another example of how much can be found within a small area.

This is a lesson we need to share with everyone around us. Nature isn’t just for people willing to venture into remote areas high in the mountains, out into expansive grasslands, or deep into forests. Nature is all around us and worthy of our attention and admiration.