The Woods are Waking Up.

Lovely spring days this last week.. cool (50's F) pleasant, light overcast.
The Woods are waking up. First two small (nickel-sized) brown frogs leaping into the stream in the west wash a week ago. Southern leopard frogs "chuckling" (Tim's description) four nights ago in the west pond half an hour after sunset. Tim says ditch/pond SW of Woods was alive and loud with calls last week.

Ticks are returning too..few in number but yesterday after a walk I found three on me.

Saturday week ago out with Liz found a cascade of large feathers tangled in vines below a leaning elm tree. Up in the tree was the carcass of a red-tailed hawk .. maybe killed by bobcat(?) and taken up on tree for consumption.

Tim says he saw a turtle in west pond (first one) a few days ago.. and also says deer herd has increased from 3 or 4 to 7-10 with young spotted fawns in the herd.

Eleagnus Russian Olive just began opening fine slender short scimitars of early leaves last week. Multiflora rose unfurling new leaves now for two weeks. Honeysuckle some purplish green new leaves unrolling. South and east end of the northern ridge by the west wash is suddenly turning a soft green with growing Stellaria chickweed, Galium bedstraw, Lamium deadnettle, Cardamine mustard and new grass. I need to start an herbarium for the Woods. Green leaves with no flowers for recognition of spring herbs.. and overwintering green perennials Ligustrum privet, Liriope monkeygrass, Euonymus vine, Lonicera japonica honeysuckle, Lonicera fragrantissima bush honeysuckle, Hedera helix ivy, Ilex americana holly. Flowering spring ephemerals.. Stellaria, Lamium amplexicaule henbit, Veronica speedwell, Lamium purpureum deadnettle, Cardamine spring mustard.

Water fills the SW Trail drainage barely flowing through the beaver dam although it is 3-5 inches deep through the channel there.

No mosquitoes yet but they will not be long with the acres of water. No predator larvae or adult dragonflies or gerrid water striders etc. In the central, dry Woods along the E-W Fence line trail, cut grape vines are oozing sugary yeasty sap and various flies including calliphorids, mycetophilids(?), other nematocera like flies are there. Tim is finding beetles in his bucket traps.. (and a couple mice and a shrew).

Birds are active.. mostly robins as usual but also chickadees, cardinals, titmice, a couple mallards in the west pond. One great blue heron Tim observed in west pond. Chris observed hawk with decapitated pigeon on the S Boundary Trail.

The west and southwest woods are mostly all wet along lower Chautauqua. The South Border trail is dry. The trail to the Two Friends is submerged.

Bob N. says this meets legal requirements of wetland (soil development with manganese and iron nodules down in the profile; swollen tree buttresses on the green ash.