Shining Light on the Prairie -- The Last Day of Summer, 2018

Yeah, I know. The old gods tell us the lush green season's got three whole weeks and a bit yet to go. It's marked on their calendar. Yea, summer.

Nonetheless, we'll diverge here on the trail from Nahma and Fayette leading to Grand Marais and the Kingston Plains for to pay real time respects to this day. Meteorologically speaking, on the stroke of midnight tonight summer is officially over.

That's as in finito. Kaput. See y'all next year.

At our latitude, August drains from the prairie some seventy-seven minutes of daylight like drought leaching water from seasonal wetlands. Appropriately, our little patch of prairie shows signs of wear and tear. The prairie's not stupid.

Neither are its many denizens, who know full well that as daylight recedes, so too does opportunity. For some weeks now, in all languages the cry's gone out: Everyone eats!

Okay, not that guy. At least, not that day.

The young Cooper's Hawk came to feast on sparrows. At Death's dark shadow cast across the hot white sky, a raucous alarm was raised. The sparrows took refuge in a bush too thick for hawks to penetrate. From safe haven they hurled insult in their loudest sparrow voices at the would be sparrow eater. That day, this hawk just stewed in the heat while sparrows swore.

It's been a productive season for great wasps, both Black and Golden. Especially Black, they've been prolific. In numbers I've not previously seen, Great Black Wasps swarm fast-fading oregano. Since these awesome flying beasts are non-aggressive, I stand close among them beneath the still searing sun and watch as they have at it.

Lately, that stand of hardy blossums is turned more competitive.

Last week a female Great Black Wasp knocked a pair of conjoined Monarchs right off the oregano, where they'd peaceably settled to do their essential late season mating thing. That giant wasp chased those Monarchs a good thirty feet up in the air and maybe another thirty southwards, before peeling off and returning to the oregano. I'd never seen the like.

The Monarchs settled on a broad sunflower leaf and presumably finished their business.

Though the hereditary monarchy's in trouble, at our place it's also been a fine year for Monarchs. We grow milkweed to call those in and it does the rest.

Once the bloom's off the milkweed, other flowering plants provide fuel for the Monarch's multigenerational trip south. Most days this time of year, we get multiple travelers passing through. This morning I counted four. Some stick around a few days, as at a way station.

Monarchs can be surprisingly aggressive. Occasionally, they'll chase sparrows for no good reason I know. The sparrows run from the butterfly. It's a hoot. Monarchs don't seem to well tolerate Swallowtails, either. There've been a bunch of those this year too. Starting with the Hurricane River in May, it was almost as if they'd followed me home.

Down here, we get both Black and Eastern Tiger.

We've a hummingbird that visits the ­­honeysuckle probably twice a day, early and late. We're on the regular route of at least three different varieties of hummingbird moths. Those are reticent critters and tough to adequately capture. Not to mention the moths most often visit after dark.

By contrast, skippers favor the sun and are unabashed posers.

Some years, skippers emerge by the score. Upon approach they scatter in flicking clouds before me. Not this summer.

Still, we've hosted a few. And with skippers comes variety.

When I transitioned from large format film to digital capture I desired something new to do. A fresh effort. One that took full advantage of my spiffy new toolset.

Playing to the Nikon's core strengths, over the last few summers I've taught myself to see small. Today's my bug shooter coming out party.

Bees of all sorts are in trouble worldwide, for a complexity of reasons. I understand no abundance or variety of those on our little patch will affect change great enough to alter the pollinators' collective path. That's an abiding sadness.

Yet all summer long -- day in and day out, rain or shine -- looking at life in the macro and finding it so robust proved a joy. All most any creature ever requires is the right invitation, then the party's on. With the months of June, July and August came profusion under harsh light, unabated.

From that brutal light, bits of welcome shade offered refuge. Provided you knew where to find it and could fit. Otherwise, it's damned sweaty work.

Today's light is significantly softened. Shadows fall easy on the prairie, muted harbingers of short times just over the horizon. Some of the the sunflowers might hold till near frost. Even now, attention turns increasingly toward those. This little bugger wouldn't have bothered with a sunflower, even a couple weeks ago. He needn't have. Now, he must.

Cicadas no longer wait on evening for vespers. They take up the chorus upon morning then continue loudly on and off throughout. Night is owned by crickets, katydids and other mostly tiny, sometimes winged things generally unseen, but whose summer song is much appreciated. It's a time of furtive hummingbird moths.

On warm nights especially, there is a symphony. With the dew, a kingdom of spiders stands revealed. Then it all begins again, if not quite anew. And sometimes, in the dark of night things turn.

Autumn brings the harvest. After that, the hard season. Old gods, new gods or no gods at all, that is the law.

Lucky for me Painted Ladies don't covet strawberries. Heather and I like to think of those as ours.

Feast while you still can, the prairie says. Time's a-wastin', it says.

And so we do.