macro | The Prairie Ecologist

This was a really fun week, but it was one jam packed with social interactions. The America’s Grasslands Conference happened just down the road and I gave a few presentations and several tours associated (officially and unofficially) with that. I also had a great time meeting new people and catching up with old ones. By the end of Thursday, though, my social engine was pretty much out of gas (I should probably think about upgrading to a more eco-friendly social engine).

As a result, on Friday morning, I got up and drove down to our family prairie to catch sunrise. I spent most of my time in the 80×80 foot plot there tied to the post-grazing photography project I’m doing this year. It was just the thing to reinvigorate me.

Purple prairie clover (*Dalea purpurea*)

The prairie was full of life and activity, even on a dewy morning. Purple prairie clover is starting to bloom across my project area, adding a lot of color, but also drawing a lot of attention from various invertebrates (more on that below). Yarrow, flax, and daisy fleabane were still in flower, but obviously on the back end of their blooming period. Upright prairie coneflower, hoary vervain, and other wildflowers were also joining the party.

Upright prairie coneflower (*Ratibida columnifera*)

We’ve had good rains lately, so there were mushrooms around, including on manure piles. I was surprised to see what I think are the same species on manure from last season as well as from this season (in areas outside of my photography project area). I guess I’d expected to see mushrooms on fresh dung, but not necessarily on older piles. Or that maybe that the fungal species would differ between young and old piles. I’m not really sure why I thought that, but either way, I was wrong. Look at me – learning new things!

Back to the prairie clover, I saw a few crab spiders hanging around on them, and some drone flies had shaken off the dew and were making the rounds looking for pollen. I only saw one bee, but I assume that’s because the others were waiting for the dew to dry – prairie clover is usually one of the top bee-attracting wildflowers in our prairie when it’s blooming. I’ll go back soon and see what’s happening when the whole prairie isn’t soaking wet.

What I saw most on those prairie clover flowers were little katydid nymphs. They were ubiquitous. Tiny, long-antennaed, grasshopper-like creatures were hanging out and (I think) feeding on the pollen and/or anthers of many of the flowers. (I just had to convince my computer that “antennaed” is a word. It keeps underlining it to highlight the fact that it doesn’t think it’s correct. I even looked up the word to make sure I wasn’t the crazy one. What’s funny, of course, is that I looked it up online, which is a skill you’d think my computer would also have.)

Most of the tiny katydid nymphs were only about 1/4 inch long, but their antennae were several times longer than their bodies. As I’ve done countless times before, I wondered how they managed to move around in the prairie with those things sticking out like that. You’d think they’d get hung up in the vegetation over and over. Can you imagine trying to walk through a forest with 25-foot fiberglass poles stuck to your head? It must be similar. It’s just one more reason to admire katydids, I guess.

There were lots of other invertebrates around, of course, including ladybirds, grasshoppers (large and small), flies, lynx spiders, wolf spiders, funnel-web spiders, and many others. Damselflies were particularly noticeable as I walked carefully through the vegetation. As I’d step, a few would fly a short distance away from my feet and land again. The only way I could get close enough to photograph them was to lie prone on the ground and army crawl slowly toward them, keeping my head low. Even then, of course, only a few let me get close. One of them was distracted (I assume) by the small insect it was feeding on. I never did figure out what it was eating. Initially, I thought mosquito, but looking at the photos later, I’m not sure.

Damselfly and sparkling morning dew drops.

The biggest highlight of the morning was seeing purple coneflower in bloom. This is a species that I’ve only seen a few times at my family prairie, and never in this particular location.

Purple coneflower (*Echinacea angustifolia*)

A couple weeks ago, I spotted two different individuals of purple coneflower and it looked like both were going to bloom. One of them was doing just that on Friday morning, with three flowers in various stages of opening. The mystery now is whether those plants have been hiding there for many years and I just noticed them this year or whether they came in from seed.

I’ve been overseeding the site every year for the last 15 years or so – tossing seed out in the winter where cattle had grazed hardest the previous season. It’s been a slow, gradual process because I don’t have a ton of time to harvest seed. I know I’ve had some purple coneflower in my mix a few times over the years, but definitely not within the last 4-5 years. Either way, it’s pretty fun that the first time I’ve seen them bloom is the year AFTER their part of the prairie experienced a year and a half of heavy grazing (the last half of the 2023 growing season and all of the 2024 season).

Purple coneflower and dotted gayfeather.

After a couple hours of exploring the prairie, I left for home feeling much better. That happens after walking any grassland, but the feelings are especially strong after I leave a prairie with which I have a strong connection.

At work, I have built lots of prairie from the ground up (both harvesting and planting the seed – with help from others, of course). Our family prairie has been under my management for about 20 years now, counting the years I helped my grandmother when she was still around. In both cases, the emotions that come with those personal ties are awfully profound. I know that every plant, every insect, every bird, skunk, mushroom, or other organism I see in those places is responding to a chain of events I helped put in motion through my restoration and/or stewardship work.

I mean – wow. Just wow.

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.

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.

Another fly. This one has red eyes. What species is it? I have no idea.

A four-spotted sap beetle (*Librodor quadrisignatus*)

This turkey vulture flew directly overhead. I counted it.

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.

The Prairie Ecologist

Essays, photos, and discussion about prairie ecology, restoration, and management

Tag Archives: macro

Photos of the Week – June 28, 2025

The End of the Square Meter Photography Project