Puddling Butterflies

Saturday morning 9 AM SW gate, a short 20 m into the Woods, there was a delightful cool from the night and dawn held in the understory. After the quick 0.5 inch rain four days ago I wanted to see if the Woods were wet. They were not. It has been a dry hot August. Peak hurricane season, mid August brought no hurricane westward to the Gulf Coast. The western wash has no standing water in the Woods.

One or two former pools above the Island Crossing are still lined with damp, almost muddy clay. Below the pipeline, where the cement underpass splashes floods into the wash, there were Limenitis 'puddling' red spotted purples and viceroys and other nymphalids, hackberry emperor et al., Ammophila sphecids. No water there; but through the underpass beneath the pipe there was still a large (1 foot?) deep square cement pool of chalky green open water leading to the underpass beneath Highway 9. One large frog splash as I approached.

The underpass beneath the pipe was home to 2 or 3 swallow nests and many fine mud-dauber pipe nests.

Along the Main SW Trail (much of the length) there are prominent broken polygons of clay or soil with perimeter fissures providing potential refugia (cooler, moister, hidden). Are these important as seed germination sites?

Through the green ash zone, the seed fall is well begun. The eastern pond is dried to an area of open water perhaps 10-15 feet long. At the eastern pond a dead, medium sized green ash has fallen across the trail and needs clearing with a saw. Some significant fall of small cottonwood leaves has begun with the heat and drought.

Saw no turtles and no deer, although I did hear a larger animal moving..likely a deer in the woods east of the SW gate.

Need to get Bruce here to look at veg before the annuals are gone for the year.

Back home removed 38 seed ticks from clothes, ankles, legs and arms.. then went for a swim!