August 2019

Sunset light beaming through a wild sunflower patch in Lake County, SD

This August a good chunk of my free time was spent walking through our Nature Conservancy Prairies in Eastern South Dakota... Usually with both my telephoto and macro lens at the ready. The summer of 2019 has been extremely wet and the prairie's responded with tall, thick grass growth, prairie flowers, butterflies and bugs galore. I tried my hand and finding and photographing flowering tall grasses as you'll see with the vibrant Sideoats Grama blossoms in the photo below.  While checking out these tall grass preserves I found plenty of other cool things to photograph too. You'll see these detail shots make up the majority of this month's favorite 12 photos. As the month waned, so did summer it seemed. It is a bittersweet time as we move into fall, but also filled with beauty. One of my favorite things to do in late August and early September is monitor the Monarch Butterfly migration as they gather then move south.  The last few photos show what I've seen so far... one evening's view on the prairie hills of Lake Vermillion Recreation Area even inspired a few words... It is the last image of the batch. Click on an image for a larger file to view and thanks for checking in!

Sideoats Grama grass flowers

Prairie onion blooms

Skipper on a thistle bloom

Melissa blue on white clover

Whitetail fawn on the edge of a cornfield

Late summer thunderstorm

Lightning of the Falls of the Big Sioux River

Dragonfly darter on Bottle Gentian flowers

Regal fritillary, skipper and stinkbug on a prairie blazing star 

Monarch roost

Monarch on a blazing star in the early evening light

Summer's End