Karen Keninger, Author at Heartland Safari

An ant walks in the center of a bright yellow flower head.

Little Soldiers: Dandelions

Updated May 8, 2023

Dandelions. they’re everywhere in the yard shining their yellow faces to the sun, brightening the ground along with the deadnettle, henbit and violets. Extermination is the plan for most lawn owners. Those bright yellow flowers scattered across a lush green monochrome seem to disturb the senses of the modern eye. This is a fairly new […]

Plants

Large yellow and black Bumblebee sits on a bright yellow flower. The hairy bee is peppered with yellow pollen grains.

Buzz: Bumblebees

Updated May 4, 2023

I’ve always discounted bees as nuisances, little demons wanting to sting me. My closest encounters have been with bumblebees and sweat bees, but there are between 300 and 400 different species of bees in Iowa alone. Worldwide the number of species is in the ten thousands. Bees branched off from wasps some 120 million years […]

Insects and Spiders

Last season's bean field is coming alive with a solid mat of purple. Volunteer henbit, sprouted from seeds dropped in yeras past. Soon this carpet of color will be obliterated by a herbicide to make way for a cornfield.

Noxious Weeds or Pretty Flowers: Henbit and Dead-nettle

Updated May 1, 2023

Last spring around Easter time, we were on the way to church when, just down the road from Owl Acres, Bryan stopped the car. A whole bean field was blooming in purple flowers. It was beautiful. But what were they? Certainly not beans. He collected some plants so we could ID them later that day. […]

Plants

Fleshy, cone-shape fruiting body of a morel mushroom stands atop a short, hollow stem, amid green foliage on a forest floor. Reproductive spores are produced and dispersed from the hollows and folds of the flesh.

The Best of Things: Morel Mushrooms

Updated April 27, 2023

I’ve always associated lilacs, peonies, and Mother’s Day with morel mushrooms. Hunting them each spring was a family ritual. Dad would gather all us kids and we’d troop out to the woods. He knew just where to look for them. Some years we’d come home triumphant with a bag full. Other years we’d find only […]

Fungus

A tightly curled, wormlike millipede lies expired on a concrete floor.

Recyclers: Millipedes

Updated April 24, 2023

Imagine that you had 50 pairs of legs. Not two legs like a human, not four legs like a dog, or six legs like an insect, and not eight legs like a spider, but one hundred. When you move, a ripple runs along them, propelling you forward in search of the same things all creatures […]

Invertebrates

A pair of nightcrawlers aligned side-to-side and front-to-back. Earthworm sex.

Intestines of the Earth: Night Crawlers

Updated April 20, 2023

Last summer, we decided to build a new shop. That meant cleaning out a bunch of old junk in the fence row and digging down to make a foundation. in the process, we disturbed legions of night crawlers (Lumbricus terrestris). They had made their homes in and around all the debris that had been dumped […]

Invertebrates

A grey critter with huge “hands” bearing long claws, pokes out from the top of a mound of dirt. Common mole has a short, tapered snout and tiny eyes that aren’t even visible in this head-on view.

Earth Thrower: Moles

Updated April 17, 2023

When I was a little girl, I wore Coke-bottle-lens glasses. They were heavy, and often made my nose sore where they rested on the nose pieces. To make them more comfortable, my father put moleskin pads on the nose pieces to cushion them. This helped until the little pads inevitably fell off and had to […]

Mammals

Action photo of a Northern Flicker boosting itself out of a hole in a dead tree. Bright yellow flashes from the underside of its unfurling wing, as it shows its white breast with black dots.

Another Drummer: Northern Flicker

Updated April 13, 2023

There’s a lot of drumming going on in the trees on Owl Acres. Woodpeckers are staking out their territory and calling to potential mates. One of the drummers is a northern flicker (Colaptes auratus). Unlike Woody Woodpecker and all his cousins, the northern flicker is brown, not black. He does have a profusion of black […]

Birds

Photo of Dave, a Yellow Labrador Retriever, and Clancy, a Golden Retriever pup, catching some zzz’s on a mat on a sunlit tile floor. Favorite toys lie strewn on the floor next to the mat.

A New Member of the Household: Clancy

Updated March 26, 2025

I have gained a heightened appreciation of the 500 or more families who take on the task of raising puppies for the Seeing Eye each year. It takes a lot of focus, attention and work just to get them housetrained, let alone all the other things that a new puppy needs to learn. And the […]

A European Starling takes flight. Wings spread, showing the tapered tips that give the bird its name. Brown bird with white mottling and a long, tapered beak.

Thank You, Shakespeare: Starlings

Updated April 6, 2023

There’s a racket going on inside the fireplace. This is the second time this spring. A bird has mistaken the chimney for a home, and, once it tumbled down that pipe, it can’t go back up. So it’s fluttering and bumping around in there trying to get out. After some attempts that sound like they’d […]

Birds