macro photography | The Prairie Ecologist

I’ll get to the Ask The Prairie Ecologist part of this post below. First, though...

One of the best things about this blog is that it has connected me to amazing people and stories all over the globe. The most recent example came last weekend, when I got an email from Sri Harsha in Gundmi, India. He reached out because he had recently started a project to document all the insects he could photograph in a square meter near his house.

Sri said that as he was starting his project, he did an online search and found my square meter project, which helped him solidify his ideas. When he first wrote me, he was 38 days into his effort, and was visiting his plot every day. He sent me the website he’s using to document his work and I instantly fell in love with his work. As of today, Sri is on day 44 and has already documented 172 insect species. He’s clearly going to blow my species total out of the water!

We emailed back and forth a little and Sri told me that he’s not a trained biologist (he works with computers and information technology) but that he is really curious about the natural world and uses photography as a way to explore and see animals up close. Back in 2017/18, Sri created a showcase of the wildlife in the rice paddies and woodlands around his village. Now he’s focusing on a single square meter of land and is creating weekly posts to update his progress. The posts are short, pithy, and fun to read.

Please take a look at Sri’s work! You can leave him comments and encouragement, if you like, at this link. I think you’ll agree that it is a terrific project and a wonderful example of what curiosity and commitment can lead to.

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ASK THE PRAIRIE ECOLOGIST!

We’ve done this several times, but it’s been a while. I’d love to hear from you. What questions do you have about prairie ecology, restoration, or management? The questions can be simple or complex, short or long. Just ask them in the comments section at the bottom of this post.

I can’t promise to answer them all, but I do promise to read them all and I’ll try to feature my answers to some of them in future posts – especially those that I think will be interesting to a large number of people. With others, I’ll just reply directly to your comment. Feel free to include your name, or not, as you prefer.

Please remember that my knowledge of prairies is nowhere close to complete, so while I’ll do my best, there will certainly be lots of questions I won’t have good answers to. When I can, I’ll try to suggest resources or people who might be better than me at providing what you’re looking for.

So, here we go! Write your questions in the comments below. Even if you don’t have a question, you might find it interesting to browse through the questions others ask and see what kinds of answers I’ve come up with (and feel free to chime in if you have applicable knowledge).

Thank you for your participation. As I repeatedly say, I couldn’t be more grateful to all of you who read this blog. Your comments and questions have consistently been a source of inspiration to me – not just the content of the comments, but also the fact that they are almost always constructive, polite, and curiosity-based. I really, really appreciate that.

Just for fun, and because Sri inspired me to think about my square meter project again, here are a few photos from my project back in 2024.

A morning dew drop with Maximilian sunflowers behind it.

A lynx spider with a captured long-legged fly.

Recently, I’ve spent some time mining my photo library for images to use in a couple different projects. While I was down that hole, I took advantage of the process to build some collections of some of my favorite photos and post them on their own web page. I hope the photos help inspire people to see prairies as something worth caring about. Feel free to send the link to anyone who hasn’t yet been bitten by the prairie bug. (Maybe don’t use that phrase with them, though.)

Now, on to this week:

One of the best things about being a photographer is that it encourages me to seek out and appreciate beauty in the world around me. The serenity that comes from that exercise has become a necessity in my life. Geez, that sounds sappy, huh? I can’t help it. It really is a big deal to me.

Last week, I made two trips to my favorite stretch of Lincoln Creek, which runs right through town here in Aurora, Nebraska. It’s not what most people would call a “pretty” stream along most of its length. In fact, many people would probably call it more of a storm drain than a stream. In the fall, though, a lot of the bare dirt on its steep eroded banks is covered by fallen leaves. That spruces it up a little (even though the leaves are from silver maples, not spruce trees – hardee har har).

Here’s the section of Lincoln Creek where I spent a couple hours photographing floating leaves last week.

During my two visits last week, I spent a couple blissful hours admiring the many thousands of leaves floating on the water, searching for photo compositions I liked. I was able to forget about the rest of the world for a little while and just focus on finding beauty. I highly recommend it – with or without a camera.

Here is a very small selection (percentage-wise) of the photos I took during those two trips. If you want to make a little game out of looking through the photos, see if you can find the one leaf that’s included in two photos. I’m pretty sure there’s just the one. You’re also welcome to just enjoy the photos without trying to win a game. It’s up to you. Also, I’m really sorry about that awful “spruce it up” joke.