In my last post, I shared a bunch of photos taken during May in my square meter plot at Lincoln Creek Prairie. Just for something different, in today’s post, I’m sharing a bunch of photos taken during May in my square meter plot at Lincoln Creek Prairie.

These are different photos, though, and they come with some stories. The main story, of course, continues to be that ALL OF THIS is happening within one tiny 1m by 1m plot of prairie.

One of the most dependable photo opportunities I get at my plot comes from Maximilian sunflower. The plant species produces extrafloral nectar (a sweet substance excreted from places other than flowers) and that attracts ants, which have a sweet tooth. James Trager alerted me to this behavior years ago (regarding ants and multiple plant species) and I’ve been tuned in ever since.

Every sunflower in my plot has constant traffic of ants moving up and down it. The ants don’t pause long, so I usually have to set up my tripod and camera on a particular spot and then wait until, hopefully, an ant comes through and stops just long enough for me to get a photo. I’m pretty sure there are at least 4 ant species seeking that extrafloral nectar, and maybe a few more than that.

When I arrived at my plot on May 13, one of the first things I noticed was a wood tick ambling slowly up a sedge plant. Great! A new species for my list! Then I saw another one on different plant. Before long, I was getting that crawly feeling on my skin and was pretty sure I had a tick on me as well. I did, but it was just on my arm, so I moved it back to the prairie (no, I didn’t put it in my plot and then photograph it).

One of the same (or similar) wood ticks was back the following day (May 14) so I got more photos of it as it moved around. The next week, there was a female tick in the plot. Since then, I haven’t seen another one. Where did they go?? They sure didn’t ride home on me – I checked very carefully.

Besides ticks, there have been quite a few mosquitos hanging around. It’s been a wet spring, which is probably correlated. One day, I arrived at the plot, sat down, and within about 30 seconds, walked back to my truck and drove home to get the long-sleeved shirt I’d forgotten. Once I had that, everything was fine. Plus, mosquitos make good photo subjects when they land on plants!

Honestly, the ticks and mosquitos haven’t really been a big problem. The ticks were only there for about a week, which I’m really curious about, and only one of them climbed onto me while I was lying on the ground. Mosquitos are there pretty much every visit, but when I remember my long-sleeved shirt, a little Picaridin insect repellant sprayed on my hands and face keep the rest off me very effectively.

There were, however, the two days when flies were biting me. I don’t know what had them so riled up during that short period, but riled up they were! I did, of course, get photos of the fly species that was biting me, and Bugguide.net identified it as a stable fly (Stomoxys calcitrans) which, as you might guess, likes to attack livestock. When there are not horses or cows around, though, they’ll go after humans and other mammals to get the blood they’re looking for. On May 20 and 21, they were busily chasing each other around and biting me as I tried to photograph them. Even then, it was distracting, but not a huge problem.

In contrast, the easiest fly photo I’ve taken yet is the one below. After I took a couple shots and scooted closer for more, it became obvious the fly wasn’t going to zip away. It was clearly dead. An insect that dies clinging to the top of a plant is usually an indication of a fungal infection. When I later magnified the photo on my computer, I could see little white spores and/or fruiting bodies on its abdomen, which confirmed that.

There are, apparently, lots of fungus species that can do this. A spore lands on an insect and grows down into its body, eventually moving into its brain and influencing its behavior. That influence usually includes having it crawl up high so that when it eventually dies, the fungal spores produced by the fungus have a better chance of being carried off by the wind. I don’t know which species of fungus this was, but I’m counting it as a species in my plot!

Speaking of fungi, I was really frustrated on the evening of May 22 when I showed up and found the quickly-drying remains of a mushroom on the ground. I’d been at the plot one day before and didn’t see any mushrooms! Did I miss this one?? Or did it emerge after I left, drop its spores and wither away that quickly? I took a sad photo of what was left, and decided it would still count as a new species. It it wasn’t very satisfying, though.

Four days after I found the sad, withered mushroom remains, I arrived in the morning to find another mushroom – vertical and healthy! I photographed it and felt a lot better. Later that day, I had an indication of how much this project is taking over my brain.

I was back at home, having worked up the photos from my morning visit, and I was thinking about that mushroom, as well as the desiccated one I’d found a few days before. How quickly do those mushrooms really live and die, I wondered? Wait, does that mean the one I saw this morning will be dried up by evening? I should go check!

As it happens, the answer is yes. They do dry up that quickly. By early afternoon, the mushroom was well on its way toward the prone, wilted condition I’d first seen a few days before.

During a couple visits in late May, I was seeing green lacewings all over Lincoln Creek Prairie. On May 21, I saw my first one in the plot, but only because it caught my attention by flying away. Ten or fifteen minutes later, another one stopped by, and I got a decent photo of it, but the head was hidden by a leaf, making the photo a little less than satisfying. On the following day, I started seeing lacewing eggs (tiny green eggs attached to plants by long filaments). I’ve seen at least half a dozen so far. A few days after that, I managed a full-body photo of a lacewing adult. Now, I just have to wait for those eggs to hatch and see if I can get a larva photo, too!

On the last day of May, I photographed two species of ladybug in the plot. One was the common (and non-native) seven-spotted ladybug. It’s big and pretty and I’ve seen it (or others of the same species) multiple times since then. It posed nicely for me and I was able to get a great face-to-face portrait. A few minutes later, I got lucky and managed a decent photo of it lifting off into the air.

On the same day, shortly after the big seven-spotted ladybug flew away, I saw a second ladybug that I first thought was an Asian lady beetle. Upon closer inspection, I decided it wasn’t, and after a look at the terrific ladybugs of South Dakota PDF online, I think it’s the native polished ladybug. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that species before, so it’s pretty neat that I first spotted on within that 1×1 meter plot. A few minutes after I saw it, I got to watch it crawl to the tip of a sunflower leaf and launch itself into the air. Shockingly, I managed a decent photo of that, as well!

So, I’m a month in. My list of species within the plot is rapidly growing (and continues to ramp up in June!) but the project is about much more than counting how many plants, animals, and fungi species I can find. By focusing my eyes and my camera within a tiny area, I’m encountering incredible storylines I would have otherwise walked past and missed.

My first attempt at this project in 2018 taught me the value of that concentrated attention. This time, I’m able to put it into practice from the beginning. The results, so far, are incredibly gratifying. This will be a big part of my life this year, which means I’ll probably post about it quite a bit. I hope you’ll enjoy the ride with me.

I’m one month into the 2024 version of my square meter prairie photography project. I can’t fully describe how much I’m enjoying it so far. Kim can attest to how often I’ve skipped across town to lie on the ground next to the little plot. She can also tell you how often I think about it when I’m not there.

Because of the burn this spring (April 19), there is a lot of bare ground in the plot. There were quite a few seedlings that germinated in that bare ground, though not all of them have survived as their existing neighbors start to form canopies above them. A few seedlings of perennials, including Maximilian sunflower and pitcher sage, have appeared, along with a couple annuals that I can’t yet identify.

As I did with my 2018 project, I’m trying to photograph as many prairie species as I can within the boundaries of the square meter. I’m also looking for beauty, though, making the project very different than a strict scientific study. I admire and photograph lead plant leaves with water droplets on them, for example, and look for color, light, and patterns.

The species inventory part of the project has gone astoundingly well so far. In 2018, I finished the year-long project with photographs of 113 plant and animal species. That felt pretty good, though I knew I’d missed a lot that had jumped, flown, or crawled away before I managed a sharp photo of them. As the project went along, I developed a better eye for finding small creatures and also realized how much diversity there was among groups like flies. By fall, I felt like I’d bypassed a lot of opportunities simply because I hadn’t spent enough time examining and trying to photograph a lot of the smaller creatures I’d seen.

This time around, I’m being careful to photograph just about tiny fly and other miniscule creature I spot. Much of the time, they turn out to be a different species than the little specks I’d photographed on previous visits. Because I’m paying better attention, my species count has rocketed up at a startling rate. I’ve only been working for a month and I’m already at about 80 different species!

Much of my success is due to experience and an intention to pay better attention to the really small creatures I see. The prescribed fire, though, is surely a big factor as well.. The bare ground provides both habitat for and opportunities to see creatures that I didn’t see in the thatchy habitat I watched in 2018. New camera gear is also helping. I can get good photos with less light than before and my Laowa 2x macro lens gives me better magnification for capturing minute leafhoppers and flies.

I think I’ve seen between 8 and 12 different leafhopper species, though I have very little idea what to look for as distinguishing features. I’m up to about 14 fly species, as well, though I have the same issues in telling species apart. If anyone out there is good with identification of leafhoppers or flies (or, really, any invertebrates) and wants to volunteer their help, I’d be very grateful!

I’ve already seen what I think are five different spider species. My grand total for all of 2018 was seven species. Because of the fire and early part of the season, the vegetation has been pretty sparse, which makes it both easier to spot and track the spiders as they move. I’ve watched several of them travel through the plot. One of them worked systematically up and down nearly every plant along its path as passed through. I don’t know if it was hunting or just exploring. Others have ballooned from plant to plant, either to travel through or, I think, because they were either starting a web or evaluating the possibilities of doing so.

In 2018, I was really surprised at how few grasshoppers and katydids I saw. I know bare ground and sun exposure can be important for at least many grasshopper species, so I figured the lack of fire might have helped explain their scarcity that year. This year has supported that hypothesis because I’ve seen quite a few little grasshopper nymphs (of two species, I think?) and have already gotten my first katydid photo.

Every single time I’ve visited the plot so far, I’ve come back with at least a handful of new species. Some I recognize, some I don’t. For the most part, I’m getting good at figuring out general categories to put things in – damsel bugs, weevils, moths – but I’ll still be relying on others to help me figure out species names. Or, if not species names, I hope people can at least help me determine how many species I have! I know this gets really tricky with species that go through incomplete metamorphosis (grasshoppers, for example) because the nymphs at different stages (instars) can look really different from each other, and it’s sometimes tough to know whether two insects are different species or just different instars of the same species.

All this has happened in the absence of any blooming wildflowers. The only flowers so far have been on the two sedge species (Carex brevior and Carex gravida). Kentucky bluegrass looks like it was set back enough by the fire that it won’t bloom this year. Other grasses and wildflowers either haven’t hit their blooming season yet or are also delayed by the fire. Those flowers will come, and lots of flower-visiting insects will come with them, but I’m really not missing them yet. That’s another big lesson I learned from 2018 – just because nothing is blooming doesn’t mean nothing’s happening!

Stay tuned! Part 2 of my May photos from this plot will include some fun stories, both about the species and my experiences watching and photographing them.

Can you tell I’m excited?

I can’t recommend this kind of project enough. Whether you’re a photographer or not, if you have a little area your home you can visit frequently, I strongly encourage you to consider doing that. Just sitting down and looking closely at the same spot for a few minutes will reveal hidden treasures. Visiting that same spot multiple times will reveal patterns and stories. I hope you find as much joy in your little plot as I find in mine.