Tag Archives: grassland

The End of the Square Meter Photography Project

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Well, it’s all over. Yesterday (May 4, 2025) marked the conclusion of my square meter photography project. I spent an hour or so at Lincoln Creek Prairie last evening trying to capture some final images before the sun literally set on this amazing journey.

Between May 5, 2024 and May 4, 2025, I visited my little plot 131 times. If you do the math, that averages out to a little more often than once every three days across the year. That seems like a lot, doesn’t it? Of course, the average doesn’t tell the whole story. There were 14 days when I was there twice and two days when I visited three times. What can I tell you? There was a lot happening and I didn’t want to miss it.

A tiny lynx spider posing for me on my final night of the project.

On my final night, some of my last photos were of a tiny lynx spiderling. That felt very appropriate, since lynx spiders felt like near constant companions through most of this last year. I saw them hunting, guarding eggs, and ballooning through the air. I’d like to think the little spiderling I saw last night was one that hatched out from within my plot, but there’s obviously no way to know for sure.

The same spiderling from a different angle.
Here’s the last photo of the plot itself as the sun was nearing the horizon.

I visited the plot throughout the winter, though not as often as I had during the 2024 growing season. As this spring came on and the prairie started to green up again, I ramped up my visits again. I was anxious to grab everything I could from the final weeks. Here are some of the photos I took during (roughly) the final month of the project.

Maximilian sunflower seed head.
Yellow woodsorrel (Oxalis stricta)
A clover looper moth in late March
Another, smaller moth – a grass miner moth of some kind, according to bugguide.net
Flies were almost always present in the plot. Telling one species from another was (and is) a huge challenge.
These springtails (Collembola) were only a millimeter or two long.
This was one of several itsy bitsy caterpillars I’ve seen this spring.
This is (unfairly) called a false milkweed bug. Naming injustices aside, it was a welcome burst of color this spring!
I photographed these lead plant buds many times as they began opening.
Kentucky bluegrass
Another fly. This one has red eyes. What species is it? I have no idea.
A ground beetle.
A four-spotted sap beetle (Librodor quadrisignatus)
Earthworm
This turkey vulture flew directly overhead. I counted it.
Ah, ticks. A wonderful sign of spring.
As soon as Maximilian sunflower started growing, ants started harvesting extrafloral nectar from it.
This little inchworm (geometer moth larva) was only about 4-5 mm long. I chased it around a long time before I finally got a few decent photos of it.
Short-beaked sedge (Carex brevior) on the final night (May 4, 2025).

Even though I’m now finished with the photography part of the project, I still have a lot of work to do. I’ve been very fortunate that a number of generous experts have helped me with species identification but that process is not yet complete. Currently, I think I photographed about 330 species over the year, which is a staggering number, but that number could still go up or down a fair amount as experts continue to weigh in. Regardless, it’s a lot bigger number than the 113 species I photographed (and felt proud of) when I first tried this project in 2018.

This second edition of the project came about because the managers of Lincoln Creek Prairie (Prairie Plains Resource Institute) burned the prairie last spring. That allowed me to find what was left of my flags from the 2018 project. I decided to re-mark the same plot with fresh flags while I had the chance – just in case I decided to come look at it again sometime. That pretty quickly led to a second full-fledged version of the photography project.

I loved every minute of it.

As I work through images and have time to absorb and synthesize this whole effort a little more, I’ll probably share more images and stories in various forms. I’m working with the amazing folks at Platte Basin Timelapse Project to create some kind of short film, and who knows what else will come out of all this. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, here are a couple short video clips from my final night at the plot. The first is the tail end of my last hike into the plot. The second is a brief reflection on the whole effort as the sun disappeared behind the trees and marked the final moments of the 12-month period. (If the videos don’t work for you, click on the title of the post to open it online and activate the links.)

Thanks for tagging along with me on this. I hope you felt even a small fraction of the joy and wonder I got out of that tiny plot of grassland. Remember, if you’re impressed by how much beauty and diversity I was able to find in a single square meter of prairie, imagine how much exists at the scale of a whole prairie, including one that may be located close to where you live. For that matter, think about what you might be able to find by just looking more closely at your backyard, a local park, or even the potted plant on your apartment balcony.

Photos of the Week – April 22, 2025

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Life is funny sometimes. Last week, I spent a morning setting up some research plots aimed at helping us learn how to suppress the growth and spread of deciduous shrubs in grasslands. When I finished, I walked about 50 yards to a patch of wild plum (a deciduous shrub) and spent a half hour photographing an incredible abundance of pollinators using the patch as a source of food. Really makes you think, huh?

Wild plum, aka American plum (Prunus americana) at The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies.
A black swallowtail.

Deciduous shrubs, of course, are great. Wild plum, for example, is one of several early-blooming native shrubs that play a vital role for pollinators in April. There aren’t a lot of blossoms among the herbaceous prairie plants in our area at this time of year. As a result, blooming shrubs draw insects in like big, showy, nice-smelling magnets. Aside from their pretty, nutritious flowers, shrubs also create nice little pockets of habitat for a lot of animals that need a little woody cover with their prairie vegetation.

On the other hand, deciduous shrubs have been spreading into and through grasslands at an increased rate. That rate of spread is caused by a lot of factors, including changes in native browser populations and a style of landscape fragmentation that has broken grasslands into pieces and introduced woody plants along the edges of those pieces. Most importantly, higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide are fueling the growth and spread of deciduous woody plants in a way that is very different than even a couple decades ago.

Adding all that up, it can be hard to know how to feel about and act around deciduous shrubs in prairies. Shrubs yay? Shrubs boo? Yes.

A sweat bee and a tiny beetle.
Probably the same species of sweat bee as shown above, but a different individual.
This photo give you some idea of how many little pollinators were using the plum blossoms. All those little specks are flies, bees, and/or wasps.

I was only able to photograph a tiny fraction of the pollinator species frenetically bouncing between the plum blossoms. Many were so tiny, it was hard to photograph them at all, and most were moving so quickly, I couldn’t focus my lens before they skipped off to the next flower. Even so, I managed to capture a decent sample of the kind of diversity I was seeing. You’ll just have to imagine the others.

A fly
A drone fly with kaleidoscope eyes. I assume her name is Lucy.
Yet another fly species.
One more fly species.

Managing the size and spread of deciduous shrub patches is already a major focus of many prairie managers. The challenge of dealing with that issue is growing like – well, like a patch of carbon dioxide-fueled deciduous shrubs. Most of the shrub species we’re facing, though, aren’t enemies. As with the wild plum I was photographing, the majority are native species that happen to be gaining a competitive edge because of a number of enabling conditions we can’t do much about.

As land stewards, we need to find ways to manage shrubbier grasslands for biodiversity and productivity because shrubbier grasslands are our future across much of the Midwest and Great Plains regions of North America. In fact, the future is already here in many places. We’re all free to think what we want of that future, but ignoring or denying it won’t do us much good.

But they’re also pretty! And they provide a lot of pollen, nectar, fruit, shelter, and other resources for prairie species.

A long-bodied, long-antennaed beetle with short wing coverings.

Really, the dual experiences I had with shrubs last week were a great illustration of how we should all be thinking about them. We have a lot to learn, and quickly, about how to manage the competition between shrubs and other prairie species. As we experiment with various approaches to the issue, we need to share our experiences with each other. At the same time, we should all recognize and celebrate the positive traits of those shrubs. That’ll help us make better decisions, but it’ll also give us a helpful perspective on the changes we see around us.

Happy Earth Day.