Snowy Woods

December 24 2009 Christmas Eve brought a blizzard to central OK and the Woods. Fourteen inches of snow with strong north winds gusting to 55 mph. Drifts were 3 feet deep and more. Strongest winter storm for this area of OK since 1949. Deepest December snowfall in the history of OK records (since 1891). This morning after two days of sunshine I ventured out to see what the Woods looked like with a blanket of snow. I parked along Chautauqua and entered via the west central break in the fence line. I came to the main SW trail and followed it to the South Boundary Trail walking eastward.

Everywhere there were trails and tracks of wildlife.. white tail deer, mice, possums?, coons? skunks? I could not read all the tracks. But there in the snow was revealed the story of what animals lived in the Woods, where they made their homes, what old paths they normally followed; what interesting features of the Woods they passed by. I wondered who had made all the tracks. Were predator and prey walking together in the storm?

I came to the big hollow burr oak(?) log and saw lots of tracks at the dark mouth, wondered for a second who might have sheltered there in the storm, then heard growling and out burst three dogs; two black labs and one golden lab. I saw no collars. The dogs looked well fed and healthy. I wonder if they were abandoned, wild dogs or lived in homes in the area. They ran to the northeast, further into the Woods.

Dashing through the snow I saw a cottontail rabbit and two white tail deer. The snow revealed the deer beds used over the past three days, sets of three or four ellipses of bare leaves where the body heat of the deer had melted the snow.

Deer tracks were the principal tracks along the game trails. They followed pronounced trails leaving large areas of smooth unbroken, untracked snow.
Tracks were abundant up along the toe of the ridge and the Northern Loop trail, along the S. Dune Trail, the Barney Junction Trail, the Two Pecan Trail.
There were few tracks or none along the E-W Fence Trail, its west extension, Hackberry Alley, the Hollow Stump Cut-off; or the N Dune Trail.

The deer tracks often appeared to follow the long orange flagging someone had placed in the central and eastern woods. I wondered if the deer had learned to follow the flags or if the flags had been placed along routes marked by deer sign; of if both the deer and the flagger were following natural open trails.

There were fresh trees blown down: a large pecan blocking the E-W fence trail, a medium small dead elm across the Hollow Stump Cut-Off; a dead cedar blocking the west extension of the E-W fence line trail. All trees had been blown to the south by the north storm wind.

I saw mostly chickadees in the Woods, a wren in the cattails, a hawk over the South boundary and heard woodpeckers drumming.

On the west edge of the marsh about 80 feet east of the Chautauqua road bank in line with the power pole north of Andrea Drive I found a new(?) old orange painted survey post. I started to walk east from it searching for the next post but overtopped my snow boots in water and retreated.

There was open water around the edges of the ponds with the oily film from diatom growth and there was a reasonable flow of water out the south exit of the Woods by post G0.