It’s getting hard to find any wildflowers still in bloom. Insect diversity is way down. We had our first frost last week. I think it’s about time to say goodbye to the 2026 growing season.
That doesn’t mean prairies are finished showing off, though. I was in Kentucky and Tennessee most of last week for the Eastern Native Grasslands Symposium (great conference – thank you for inviting and inspiring me!) but I’ve still managed several recent trips out into local prairies. I’ve seen plenty of beauty during each prairie visit. The most recent of those visits was this morning when I helped Mike Schrad check his small mammal traps (we caught just one plains pocket mouse) at the Platte River Prairies.
I arrived early this morning and found a variegated meadowhawk on its overnight roost. The sun wasn’t up yet and there was a thin layer of fog across the prairie. I got low to the ground and managed a few photos of the dragonfly before Mike arrived and it was time to get to work. Surprisingly, this was my first photo of a meadowhawk during this fall migration. I normally run across quite a few of them in late September and October as they’re moving southward through Nebraska, but I’ve just not been in the right places at the right times until today, apparently.
I have, of course, continued my photography of milkweed seeds. You might be getting tired of seeing them but I’m not. Feel free to skim past the photos but I’m going to keep putting them in front of you.
I’ve also been catching a lot of sunrises recently. It’s a lot easier to do that this time of year when the sun is coming up at almost 8am. It hardly feels like a challenge at all to get up before the sun these days. Now the challenge has switched to being able to get out to the prairie and then back to work before people expect me to be on calls or in meetings.
This week, I caught a sunrise at Lincoln Creek Prairie that provided some terrific color. Just as the color was starting to fade, a big bank of clouds slid slowly across the sky and gradually squeezed the light out. It was the unusual situation in which the intensity of light decreased as the sunrise progressed. Here’s a series of photos showing the photos I took as the clouds stole my light.
The morning after I returned from some warm sunny days in Kentucky, we had our first frost of the season here at home. I stole a few minutes in my backyard prairie garden and captured a few shots of the frost before the sun burned it off.
I hope you’re having a great October so far. There’s a lot happening in the world, but if you’re like me, a little time in the prairie can make it all a little easier to handle. Be well, friends.
