Afternoon Light Gaps

Returned to the Woods through the SW Gate this afternoon. I am thinking we may get some rain from Bonnie and I wanted to see if the Woods have dried up. They have.

The first 200 feet of the main SW Trail is now covered with a layered processed leaf pack washed there by floods a fortnight ago. It has been baked dry by the heat.. The soil beneath it is still quite moist but it has the smell of good aerobic decomposition..not a flooded anoxic odor. Further along the trail, the soil is wetter.. or moister.. there is no standing water remaining along the entire trail.


I marked the deepest pool location (now dry) with a red wire flag. A meter west of it there is the most heavily used, game highway. Quite pronounced and well defined only a meter or less wide running south to cross the dune and north to enter the dense young green ash stand. I flagged it. It may be interesting to observe game trails and see how constant they are, season to season and year to year.

The Sympetrum dragonflies had returned to their regular perch.. five adults this time. I watched as one dropped down to forage on flies in a light patch a couple meters to the southeast.

Light gaps were attractive for other showy insects too.. red spotted purples and orange brushfooted nymphalids were flying in other light gaps. A nice day-flying patchy gray Catocola underwing moth landed on a dying big green ash while I sat and scribbled. Significant mosquitoes around me even with DEET.. not too bad.

The SW Cut-off Trail to Tall Stump needs replenishment of orange and light blue paint.

Around many of the snags there is now an abundance of frass or boring dust from beetles and carpenter ants. Some of the frass from down bur oak branches I imagine may be cerambycids or Dynastes Hercules beetles.

The flooding of the forest from the Lloyd Noble run-off has more or less simultaneously begun the death or degradation of many of the large mature trees in the southern half of the forest. Dendrochronology and stand analysis should document this.

In the canopy, cicadas and katydids. The cicadas start in the mid range and then increase their pitch and accelerate like a bicycle tire accelerating with a card stuck in the spokes. One cicada will produce this call and then be answered by another some distance away in a duet.

On the ground there is relatively fresh (< 2 week old) "cotton" from the big cottonwood. I think these trees must shed their seeds over several pulses throughout the summer. There is also a widespread white efflorescence common on the ground like patches of white mycelia.. or drying crusts of soluble minerals.

Small flocks (3-5) of robins in the understory.. there are more closer to the southern cattails.

I walked back towards the Chautauqua side and north around the sedge beds toward the 2 meter plus tall cattails. The forest and sedges were all dry until near the cattails where there was standing water.. (smelled like feces). I found the hibiscus (in flower) I had seen in the ice and snow of winter.

I must go and really explore the cattails now in the full summer. There are growing Argiope garden spiders there.