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Kaw Valley Almanac spotlights seasonal cycles and a gray hairstreak’s clever tail defense

The Kaw Valley Almanac’s weekly nature update encourages residents to view local seasons as a repeating cycle and use it to place everyday plant and animal observations in time and place. The contributed series emphasizes that the Kansas River Basin’s seasonal pattern has long shaped what people and wildlife have experienced locally, even as climate changes.

August 16, 2026 Lawrence Community
Illustration of a butterfly feeding on a flowering plant beside a riverbank, surrounded by seasonal plants to suggest recurring nature cycles.

This week’s almanac also shares a specific wildlife detail: a gray hairstreak butterfly feeding at a showy partridge pea flower uses a defensive strategy in which an orange patch on the wing serves as a decoy, aiming to draw a predator toward biting off the tail rather than the head.

The Lawrence Times notes that the Kaw Valley Almanac runs each week as a contributed piece, with more editions available at kawvalleyalmanac.com and updates posted by Ken Lassman, author of several works on seasons and cycles in the Kansas River Basin and Douglas County.