Quick check on Spring

10 AM morning visit to the Woods through the SW Gate. This past fortnight we've had abruptly some of the coldest weather of the winter (hi teens, low twenties) then some warming and a few inches of good snow (equal to 0.25 inch water) followed by rapid warming and a 0.1 inch rain. The combination of cold, to prime development, and warmth and water may start spring moving faster.
In the northern third of the Ragweed Delta, bittercress Cardamine was beginning to show its first clusters of small white flowers. The new leaves are edible in spring and I enjoyed a small green snack. On the south end of the Dune Trail, I encountered 3 whitetail - 2 yearlings and one older(?) .. they ran east along the south Boundary and then north on the white trail.
The ponds were full and stable.. East @ 2.75 feet; West @ 2.17 feet. There was water flowing at the Elm Bridge. I should set up a depth gauge above the Elm Bridge along the fence across the stream.
I measured the SW section trails: the Two Friends to Leaning Elm trail (2 posts plus ~ 120 feet to the Elm); and the W Dune trail two posts and a 100 feet to the S Boundary Trail.} One post for the 2 Friends - S Boundary Cutoff. Yellow flags currently mark all measured locations for posts.
I returned to the SW Gate via a route running along Chautauqua I had not established previously.. too often wet underfoot.. blocked with fallen trees and near significant Poison ivy. All that notwithstanding, I think I will go ahead and establish the route, cut the few fallen logs and trim out the near poison ivy. The route connects the northwest to the southwest in a way that no other trail provides. It will be a good route dry Sunday mornings absent the Chautauqua traffic. Found a broken newish shovel (used spring 2010 for setting the herp traps?).

Ice at Elm Bridge

Chilly day today, 23F with a north wind 14 m.p.h. I went to the NE entrance to the Woods at 10. I was curious about the Woods in the cold, after our gentle 0.25 inch rain Thursday 9 Feb. The East Pond was up to 2.71 and West Pond was up to 2.17 - both looking moderately full.
Below the Elm Bridge, the shallow water had frozen in concentric fractal like shapes. A small wren was investigating.

I walked most of the northern trails and did not see deer or fresh tracks. There were older frozen tracks of a dog below the largest main culvert. There were abundant feeding flocks of robins busily flipping leaves over on the forest floor.. and several bright red male cardinals tagging along with the group. East of Hackberry Alley there was a flicker calling and then hammering a tree and a hawk complaining.
I placed two more steel stakes (Barney Jct. Trl.and south Hackberry). I need to find two more for north Hackberry.
I checked species ID on 5-10 more trees from #160 to #200 off trail northwest of the Pipeline Trail.

Except for the birds, it felt like the Woods were locked down tight.. everyone safe in their beds before the approach of the coldest two days and nights of the winter.

I began the day early at the Woods and wound it up at sunset there too. I placed about 35 more of the short steel 50 m trail posts. Now only about five still remain. Then I can start to tag the posts with sequential location information. Seventy plus 50 m segments are marked now, 3.5 km.
The morning at 7:30 was cold (38F) and windy. From the NW entrance I encountered three deer near the big cottonwood with post.. doe and her two yearlings. She did not run fast or far. I think she may have become acclimated to people. Her two yearlings, are more flighty and go bounding away white tails flashing. There was a smell of skunk I must have startled by the West Pond - may belong to the burrows just up the hill. Dead possum on the trail pretty well decimated now.. fur on the trail.

Before sunset I returned to finish another segment and encountered seven or eight deer NE of the East Pond. Cottontail dashing in the eastern woods. Both morning and evening I watched flocks of robins foraging in the dried leaves on the forest floor. I thought how the new conditions of peri-urban ecology would affect the life and experience of an individual robin. Bugs and beetles are there as they have been for centuries..but now in winter, invasive green plants Lonicera honeysuckle and Ligustrum privet provide a different foraging environment. Individuals still experience the prior ecological relationships; but now have layered on top of that, new ecological effects, changed vegetation phenology/ species; flooding from run-off, the din of traffic on busy Highway 9 closeby.

Soft Soil, Steel Posts, Chilly Day

After Thursday night's 0.2 inch rain, the Main SW Trail had drained clear. It looked as if water had washed up to the lodged leaning ash. I set nine new 22 inch steel stakes at 50 m intervals from the SW Gate to 85 ft. west of the Dam; and seven along the South Boundary Trail to just beyond the G10 post; and one more on the Dune Trail just south of the dune crest.

I rolled up the vinyl rolls for the three eastern-most herp arrays and stored them with the minnow traps on top of the closed buckets.. ready to be deployed.

Three or four white-tailed deer were south of the East Pond. The water level of the East Pond was 2.7 ft and the West Pond was 2.22 ft. Fresh dog tracks along the main SW trail.

Water at Elm Bridge covered the top of the steel stake there; and was flowing gently.

I walked a game trail from the Ponds Entrance through the willows and sedge along Chautauqua.

Cold 45F and windy 18 mph NW day.

Late January Clear Morning

Met Gary and Ryan at NW Gate and entered via Ponds Trail. The West Pond was up to 2.20 ft and East Pond 2.75 ft after the 1.4 inch rain this week. Amazed and pleased to find the floating net turtle trap from ecology sitting in overgrown sedges. Near the ponds we heard a pair of barred owls in the southern Woods calling each other - at 10 in the morning! Wonder what was going on?
The strong winds before the rain brought down across the trail a couple of mid sized dead tops from hackberry, west and (old) east end of Ravine Trail. I cleared with saw. On the upper Ravine Trail the three clumped Lonicera fragrantissima were all blooming. Found a few fresh leaves of Japanese honeysuckle flushing out. At the West Pond new dead possum on the north side of the trail.

Spring rains or winter?

Brief end of the day out at the Woods. I wanted to see what last night's 1.4 inch rain had done. After the long dry January the land was growing winter-parched, cracks in the soil. Entering via the SW Gate I just passed the 100 m mark on the Main SW Trail when I saw the shallow flood of water in the sedges and forest. Maybe 2-3 inches deep, it pooled in an interesting pattern that should help explain the patterns of the vegetation, the death of trees like bur oak that cannot survive flooded roots, the thick stands of young green ash that can. I walked back south to the South Boundary Trail and then across the W. Dune trail following fresh deer tracks in the soft soil of the trail. I saw a few white-tailed deer running north across the water, into the Woods. Not many deer in there these past few weeks.
It will be interesting to see if this late January rain will spur spring growth with the run of 50 and 60 degree F days we've had.. or if the plants will hold back with the likelihood that we have more cold winter ahead.

Snails, Cattails and New Trees

Marvelous warm day in the Woods, mid 60’s. I went to the NW cattail swamp. While the two ponds are still well filled and holding their depth, the swamp is mostly dry with the lack of rain (4/100ths inch in the past 3.5 weeks). The swamp had no standing water, but the soil was still wet/ saturated. I walked out into the cattails and looked back to the NW and observed the striking sharp boundary between the old dry dead gray cattails and the greenish, yellowish brown sedges.. a sharp contour line. I was delighted to find one of the 1955 Carpenter heavy steel posts where I had searched the cattails this summer in vain. Recorded location. I lifted willow logs off the wet swamp soil and found 6 or 7 clusters of young isopods, 80-100 in a bunch with 2-3 older (adult?) isopods with each cluster. There were also lots of snails, mostly the flat, round Helisoma with a good many Physa, with their rising spirals. The sedge contour band width was about 80 ft., beginning about 5 ft. NW of Carpenter’s post. The cattails in the central zone were like an amoeboid superorganism with lobes like pseudopods. Interesting to trace the advance or retreat of the boundary with annual precip changes.

I checked 75 of student’s 132 tree I.D.s.; and corrected one third. Must check the remaining 50. I added another 8 trees mostly in the NW corner. Many trees larger than 40 cm DBH are not tagged and not in the database. Too many, to do more than a good sample. Example: there are another 15-20 green ash the same size as the ones I recorded, distributed around the NW section of the swamp extending onto dry land close to Chautauqua. Now ~ 300 trees with permanent tags identified. Getting enough to begin to make a partial tree map indicating where the different species are primarily located.

South of the big cottonwood next to the Carpenter post a herp trap bucket was open. I fished around in the muck and found the skeleton of an armadillo. I need to take down herp arrays and firmly close the buckets.