New North Rim Trail on the Last Day of 2011

Marvelous day today.. 73F balmy; but this is going to swell the buds of new leaves before the deep cold of January and February arrives. At 10 I went to the Woods and began work on a new North Rim Trail. From near the east end of the Northern Loop, the route follows the deer trail north, ascending to the upper northwestern forest of juniper, walnut and mixed deciduous species. It then runs west along the southern edge of the upper terrace to connect with the highest eastern section of the Ravine Trail before that trail descends to the East Pond.
The route was thick with Smilax briars, juniper branches and vigorous growth of Symphoricarpos coralberry.
By 3 o'clock I was beaten bruised and scratched up; but the trail was through and flagged with dull orange. It will take weeks of additional trimming and many more traverses before it is in good shape; but it is now possible to follow the route all the way. The North Rim Trail will provide a view over the eastern Woods, particularly in the winter and access to the upper terrace with its very different habitat. The forest and shrub layer there is thicker than on the floodplain. It provides more shelter and food for wildlife. This trail is going to be a favorite for students interested in wildlife. There are several places where a motion camera would be kept busy recording the traffic of animals from their dens excavated in the earth along the south-facing upper slope and along their paths. This trail is also the one most exposed to the sound of traffic along Highway 9. It will be best at times when traffic is light.

A sad footnote to the day came early when I found the recently deceased old mangy dog that I had observed in the Woods several times in November. The carcass is decomposing near the junction of the Northern Loop and the new Northern Rim trails.

No deer today, although yesterday just past 5 PM I watched a trio of yearlings in the SW Woods.. not terribly concerned about me. The West Pond appeared to be covered in a light scum (of pollen?). It should be too early for Juniper (?) but the scum had the yellowish-golden tint of juniper pollen. The cold is coming.. strong north winds will bring in the New Year!

A new place and new trees

Scores of visits to the Woods and I had never seen this place before.. From the top of the Dune Trail, the way west along the crest of the Dune is fiercely guarded by dense curtains of briars. Today I ventured past the curtain, moving very slowly, disentangling each length of brier before it could rip clothing, shin, ankle, arm, neck. West along the crest there is an open area, an active wildlife highway, well used deer beds and unusual large trees, not common elsewhere in the Woods. I measured/ recorded several large Bumelia or Sideroxylon there. In the past week I've added 45 new large trees. The Dune crest and the swale to the south and west is a well protected, all but inaccessible sanctuary, where wildlife can rest undisturbed by passing biologists .. and new discoveries can remain hidden from most explorers. I must return and explore.

More Trees

Last two days I've added 22 trees to database, beginning with the series at #301. Approximate minimum size of 40 cm DBH.. noting GPS coordinates, species, diameter and morphology or unusual features. Working east along the South boundary south of the Dune. Continue east of the OWP recycled Coca-Cola sign board.
On walk-around encountered the barred owl again on the north side of the west pond. Cool to mid high 40's, low 50's.

Today had some inspired thoughts about Oliver's Woods as an example of peri-urban ecology.

Tuesday 27 Dec good 3 hour excursion with Michael and Becky discussing phenomena in the Woods. Water flow, plants, animals.

Solstice, Wind Symphony and Owl Surprise

Good, slow 45/100ths inch of rain fell on Monday the 19th. I visited the Woods through the SW Gate in the afternoon on a warmish (55F) Wed the 21st, Winter Solstice. I was greeted by a calm whitetailed doe near the NW corner of the dune. She declined to run; but her two yearlings, a 100 meters east, ran off to the west, white tails flashing.
The ponds had risen in an asymmetrical fashion - the E Pond was up to 2.30 ft and the W Pond was up to 2.10. Both began at 2.0 before the rain. There were a dozen busy aquatic insects (small chironomids?) flying over a small SW corner of the Western pond.. couldn't make out from a distance what they were. Otherwise, the ponds were quiet. A downy woodpecker was working hard to extract the small peanuts from Claire's titmouse feeder by the E Pond.

I returned to the Woods on a much colder afternoon, today, the 22nd via the trash station. Approaching the south entrance by the H10 post, I disturbed a large barred owl that flew 100 feet west and then looked at me until I moved on. I wandered east across the recently washed-over ragweed delta. The patches of big-leaved Polygonum that had remained green along the service road were now dead and brown. Along the delta stream channels, I found a curious hole in the soft wet sand, 1.5-2 inch diam. and a foot deep, straight down. I wonder what could have made that. I dipped in a stick and the bottom 3 in. came up wet with ground water.. a good test location for shallow water table depth.

W of the Elm Bridge I heard a loud, high-pitched sound like the call of a hawk ringing through the Woods. After a moment. I discovered it was from the large branches of a broken elm lodged against the upper bole of a stout young green ash. In the 12-17 mph N wind the two trees played a unique wind symphony together. I wondered how the sounds of other trees rubbing and rattling against each other would change as the wind shifted strength and direction.. and if animals living in the Woods took any notice.
West of the Bur Oak Bridge, the white barked trunks of a small group of sycamores stood out. There are not many of these in the Woods ( fewer than 20?). I expect they will grow well and their numbers should increase.
I need to find the diameter tape and begin documenting more of the large trees in the south Woods.
Leaving the Woods I took the Dune Trail south and stopped at the big leaning Bur Oak snag, to push aside a jutting broken branch.. and to my surprise flushed the barred owl from its perch on the bur oak snag just 10 feet from me. It left a dead vole or large mouse, still intact, belly up on the bur oak. I moved along without delay so that the owl could return to its dinner before the storm arrived.

Eight Deer, Santa Missing

Out in the NE Woods Friday 16 Dec on the new Tree Trail I spotted eight white-tail deer together (yearlings and does) moving north along the border of the field and then dashing away west into the Woods.. no jolly rotund man in red suit.
After 33/100 inch of rain Tues-Wed Dec 13-14 the E and W ponds both register 2.0 feet depth. The W. Wash is filled with water but dry just before the Elm Bridge. No signs of turtles or other large creatures in the ponds. Lots of tracks of deer and raccoons in soft sand at the Elm Bridge.
With all the leaves down, the Woods are LOUD with the sounds of traffic on Hwy 9.. nothing to buffer and damp the sound.

Russell and I out Sunday 18 Dec 4 PM blue painting tops of steel posts in Woods to facilitate spotting. Spot another couple deer and hear a dog barking (at us) in the dense brier patch between the two dune trails. On the Tree Loop, Russell spotted a big Meloe oil or blister beetle.. just the posterior wiggling, sticking straight up out of a pencil-width vertical hole in a mound of soft soil. Remarkable that a large beetle like that is out exploring in mid December.

We also met two folks (non-university?) inside the NE Gate collecting natural items in a zip lock bag for decorations.
On the Main SW Trail someone (mouse?) is chewing on small (1/4" diam) surface roots from an elm by the dry deepest pool along the trail. Maybe they've found some attractive fungi growing there? Nearby blue-taped 50 meter cedar post marker has become a fecal marking focus for a larger animal .. coyote? coon? Need Nick to I.D.
In the center of the Woods, scores of robins were busily foraging in the leaves on the forest floor before the arrival of Monday's predicted storm. It was warm enough (58 F) that a few muscoid/calliphorid flies and noctuid moths were flying.

The soil surface along the Main SW Trail is remarkable now. Where flowing water has pushed away the thicker deposits of new fallen leaves, the light rains this week have beaten the underlaying organic duff and left a soft airy blanket on the forest soil.

Wintry Woods

5 PM as the sun was setting in a wintry western cloud bank I entered the SW Gate to see the Woods. There was a light sleet falling after the very light few hundredths inch of rain this afternoon. The Woods by the gate, had a delicious smell, two parts decaying leaves, one part wine under the big bur oaks. I wandered up to the lodged green ash and thought how it had done well, despite having fallen partially over. Its upper branches were still supported 30 feet up, hung in another good sized ash.. and its roots, partly tilted out of the soil in the beginnings of a mound, were raised a critical few inches above the flood level. When the surrounding forest had all of its roots drowned, some of the roots of this tree would still be able to breathe.
i walked down to the Grandfather cottonwood following the dark soft soil swept clear of leaves along the main channel of the floodwater; then south on the W Dune trail to the odd grave-like pit by the redbud. There I decided to try forging north in search of Carpenter's steel stake 200 feet north. The briars were a thick curtain; but I had clippers and slowly made progress through.

I was struck by the way in which the Smilax greenbriar were densest beneath the branches of the junipers. Birds, waxwings and others recruit to the branches of the cedar to feed on the ripe cone/ berries in winter. They poop out the seeds of Smilax they have also consumed. They shelter for the cold night in the evergreen where the boundary layer effect of the foliage buffers a space against the wind and cold. The greenbriar, growing thick as a wall beneath and up into the branches of the Juniper provides a thorny fence against herbivores that might otherwise chew the bark or rub antlers there. All parties benefit in a mutualism built on several functions, food and shelter for birds, dispersal of seed and support for vine growth for the greenbriar, dispersal of Juniper seed and protection of tree from large vertebrates capable of damaging it.

I clipped my way westward to the end of the dune and escaped northwest to the Main SW Trail. It may be tough to find that particular steel post. The whole area is densely covered in briars growing over standing and fallen junipers.

I walked east along the E-W trail to the Wash. There was plenty of water, but the Elm Bridge area was dry. Up around the Tree Loop and by now it was quite dark. A full moon lit the sky but its light was obscured by solid clouds. I walked the trail down to Island Crossing testing my ability to pick out enough features in the dark to keep on the trail. Some of the light blue blazes were faintly visible as slightly lighter shades on the bark of the trees.

Heading west I heard large animals (deer, I assumed.. or racoons, skunks etc.) moving in the dark but could not see well enough to see any. I imagine they were surprised to discover a human wandering along the Woods' trails at night. This is their normal visual world.. dark or twilight. They must be able to navigate, find food and run fast to escape danger in the darkened woods.
The west walk back across the Woods was quite dark and gave me a tingle of adrenaline struggling to discern the trail. I reached the SW Gate and paused there reflecting that here was a new way to know the Woods.

Central Mystery in the Woods

Sunday Dec. 4 after a good 85/100ths inch of rain I went to the Woods via the SW Gate. Along the main SW Trail there was a peculiar medium diameter elm near the lodged Green Ash. The bark of the elm stood out from a distance as almost orange. A little closer approach and I could see the outer bark all up and down the tree had been chiseled off by woodpeckers foraging for bark beetles. In places, they had removed the bark down to the xylem sapwood and left revealed the pretty engravings of the Scolytus multistriatus bark beetle oviposition galleries. The beetles had attacked and killed the tree with the elm disease Ophiostoma ulmi.
East, west and south of that tree there were a half dozen elms with fresh new leaves flushing out along the stem.. likely with the death of the upper branches and the loss of apical dominance. It will be interesting to see if any of these trees are alive in the spring or die over the winter.
Turning north from there off any trails the Woods are now open enough that you can wander and see new things. I encountered two deer beds.. 2 foot long crumpled ovals, like large fortune cookies, where deer had spent the previous rainy night and left the leaves flattened.
There are mysteries here. Large 4 foot x 2 foot shallow divots in the soil, 1 foot deep. Were they excavated by people or the result of some natural process? Like a rectangular crater created by the overturned root mound of a fallen tree.. but where is the tree?
There are the two old hollow steel posts standing a meter tall or more in line like the markers of a decades old botany plot. I would like to work out what they once marked. There are old faded rows of trees, cedars, lined up as if along the edge of two different early farm roads or old boundary fences.. east of Hackberry Alley. Maybe some will match Carpenter's 1950's hand drawn map of fence lines and trees (and pits) in the Woods 55 years ago.
Continuing north I wandered in to the southern end of the group of the biggest trees. There were on the ground the largest bur oak leaves I can recall.. but I could not locate the tree.. must be close by somewhere.
Walking off trail you encounter the small county roads of the small vertebrates in the woods. Narrow 4-5 inch wide paths shared by coons, mice, possums, skunks, armadillos and others as they travel from point A to point B in their nightly commutes.
The rain makes the trails visible enough to walk along and mark with tooth picks. Thinking of the animals that use these same trails week in and week out like we use the roads near our homes.. I thought again of the likelihood that most small vertebrates in the Woods don't often see the Woods the way I do.. its colors, light and shadow and patterns.. because these animals are rarely out during the day. Their world is Oliver's Woods at night. Their view is the Woods at twilight and in evening darkness.
There seems to be a small family group of 3-4 white tailed deer that are using the Woods for their winter shelter.
Now in the Woods the last of the canopy leaves are down. The green that stands out now are Euonymous strawberry vines, Eleagnus Russian olive and Ligustrum Privet (latter two both exotic).

Warm Day in Early Winter Robins for Tea

Mid 60's this afternoon. I had to quit my desk and go walk in through the SW Gate at 3:30. I carried the blue paint and sprayed the tops of a half dozen steel posts in the Woods. Marvelous time to be out. Cold storm winds coming in a few hours. The Grandfather cottonwood has lost all but 10% of its leaves, one of the last trees to drop leaves. Its large trunk has rising clockwise twist. Do other trees in Oliver's Woods twist clockwise?
At the Elm Bridge the sand was dry but upstream there were 30 plus robins drinking and sipping along the edge of the pool. I wonder what the male female ratio of the flock might be. The East Pond is stable at 1.54 feet and developing a little more oily sheen of organic decomposition. One white-tailed doe and two yearlings along Hackberry Alley. The doe did not seem overly concerned and did not run away until I walked closer to her. There are several to many twig girdled meter-long thin branches dropping now. They have been cut by cerambycid girdlers. I collected two lengths to look for egg niches. In the forest the rose brown leaves of Viburnum rufidulum shrubs are some of last remaining. At the edge of rubbish cliff above the Elm Bridge a massive dead elm trunk has broken south in the wind. The golden color of the fallen pecan, hackberry and cottonwood leaves has now faded entirely to different light shades of brown. The color went quickly.

Welcome Winter

The storm of the past few days passed over and left a cold clear day. It feels like the first day of winter. From the NW corner up the Ravine Trail a rabbit dashed away north. The West Pond was looking full at 2.18 feet and the East Pond was stable at 1.50 feet. The flooding west of the Beaver Dam was gone.. dried down into the spongy gray black organic soil. The Western Wash was full at the Elm Bridge but barely moving. Four deer bounded away from the Woods east of the West Pond. The Woods were quiet and the clear sky was cold.

Blustery Day

Overnight we had a slow gentle rain followed by a sharp freshet at 6 a.m., with a total of 75/100ths.
I was curious to see if that would produce flooding in the Woods, so drove down through the trash station to the South Central trail.
The Ragweed Delta and the Willow basin on the south were both flooded and water was moving slowly upstream west through the Beaver Dam; but had only gone less than 50 m west of the Dam. The area south of the dune along the Dune Trail was flooded but west of there was clear. At the upper Northeast corner of the Ragweed Delta there were rapids. But there was no break over across the levee and the water was just below the top log of the Elm Bridge and just below covering the island of Island Crossing.
The East Pond was at 1.37 feet and the West Pond was 2.16 feet.

There were 30-40 mph North winds gusting and tossing the tree tops. In the dense thickets of young 40 yr old green ash the trees rattled against each other like a percussion instrument across the stand. Light yellow leaves were still raining down and most trees are now bare.. but a few large cottonwoods still hold their yellow crowns. One white-tailed doe on the hill slope above the East Pond stopped, then ran away east.

November Cedars

In through the NE Gate today. No purpose, no urgency, just a Thanksgiving time to relax and absorb the Woods. Down along the Wash and below the Elm Bridge there were moderate swathes of green ground starting.. Stellaria chickweed, Duchesnea mock strawberry, Allium spring onions, Viola violets, Euonymus strawberry or burning bush.
Things to eat in the Woods: Symphoricarpos coralberry, Rosa multiflora red fruits, Allium spring onions, Lycoperdon fresh puffballs. Lonicera honeysuckle berries are probably mildly poisonous.

Two large brownish orange Araneus on their webs across the trail.. interesting to note when the last are seen this season and the first are seen next summer.

I found again the two parallel rows of limby cedars - each with 3-4 trees. The east end runs to just west of the junction of the N Loop to the E. Trans OWP. The west end intersects the alternate trail running north from Fence Corner. I need to scan between the trees for barbed wire fence with metal detector. These trees look like the vestigial markers of an old farm road. Birds perching along fence lines and depositing juniper seed. Coming and going through the NE entrance cedars there is a flock of robins maybe 20 birds foraging there.

Twenty more individual trees flagged and numbered with blue tape along the Tree Loop - including Sapindus?
Plus at the east end of the bur Oak Bridge, one single Nandina with bright green leaves.

Shallow pooled water still across the southern boundary of the SE quarter of the Woods, although the Main SW trail is mostly drained.

Trees with Tim V

Out to the Woods with Tim and R and G this afternoon via the NW Entrance on the Ponds Trail. We walked down to the still flooded Main SW Trail and Tim noticed elms with epicormic sprouting. New green leaves flushing all along the stem in late November with the loss of apical dominance. A sure sign of stress perhaps the last burst before death.. It would be interesting to look for as many trees as possible in the Woods with new flushing November leaves and watch their fate.. How many will be alive in the spring or early summer of 2012? Were these the trees that were attracting scores of hackberry butterflies this late summer/ early fall 2011?

Need to brainstorm with Tim about best ways to mark trails, junctions, distances, directions. How best to map? Need to map many more of the largest trees by GPS.

Maybe ask Heather M how to think about the trees with the epicormic leaf flush. For a given species (slippery elm) is there a characteristic signature of phloem sugars, plant moisture stress, stem volatiles? Maybe something butterflies can detect.. we can test or use to attract.. maybe attract beetles as well as butterflies.. an alteration of 'green leaf volatiles' aldehydes, ketones etc..?

Much of the Main SW Trail has drained and is now just sticky. Some large pools remain along the trail. Remarkably three mosquitoes found Tim.

Rain and floods return

Monday night we received 141/100 inches of abrupt rain before midnight. Today, Tuesday 4:30 PM I went to the SW Gate to see the Woods. Water was pooled on the Main SW trail at 150 m from the SW Gate.. narrow inch deep pools that broadened to wide ponded areas past Dragonfly corner around the leaning ash tree.
The E Pond had risen to 1.2 feet and the W. Pond to 2.03 feet. Water was flowing, draining slowly through the Beaver Dam. A White-tailed deer sprinted west from the dam. 7 or 8 new Shaggy mane Coprinus were emerging NW of the dam. Earlier population/ clone of these was NE of the dam.
The rain has brought down many more leaves and sounds carry more clearly/ starkly of traffic.. or other sounds. It would be interesting to record sound (noise) level in the Woods 365 days of the year at 5 PM rush hour and note the change with the season.

Best Time In the Woods

Early this mid November morning I went to the Woods. Overnight the weather had changed from near 80 yesterday to low 30's.. grey white sky. The past couple of days most of the leaves have come down. Some of the last are the cottonwoods. Now on the forest floor they turn the Woods to gold. The Grandfather cottonwood on the SW Trail still has near a full canopy of green leaves. I wonder if this is because it has roots down to better water.. or if it is a stress symptom.. or is genetic.
With a 20 mph wind, hour after hour last few days, I thought the ponds would lose a lot of water; but they both looked good. The East Pond has 0.74 feet and is maybe about one third its normal size. The West Pond has 1.88 feet and looks about 85% normal size.
Standing at the West Pond I heard a pileated woodpecker and then watched it fly in and begin to forage on a tree up on the plateau. The East pond has a sheen of organic oil from decomposition (maybe oil from new cottonwood leaves?).

This is the best time to be in the Woods. Full of light and color.. cool/ cold enough so no ticks or mosquitoes.. the understory open enough to see trees and features in the Woods hidden in summer. It is a good time to leave the familiar trails, go and explore new hidden things.. find new big trees, new tree species, new places. I began to see again the line of old sentinel cedars along the once upon a time fence rows; full of limbs from open field growth, overtopped now standing dead or tilted over, giving way to hackberry, walnut, elm, pecan. I puzzled again over several small trees (Viburnum?) with opposite small thorns and rounded reddish-yellow leaves with apical indented tip.. bark light mocha.. pebbly texture like miniature version of persimmon bark.. with smaller pebbles and much lighter color. The same white flower as the shrub at the east side of the West Pond?

Walking down in the dry Western Wash.. an amazing find, a new blooming light purple/ lavender violet.. one blossom.. on this early winter/ late fall day.. just above the junction of the East and West Wash.

Back in the sheltered ravines a 'bottle trail' branching west through the junk of a half century ago.. old bottles with unique miniature ecosystems.. healthy green moss cushions, protected catch basins for the rain.
There are three old car frames stripped to nothing but the heaviest metal parts, suspension, transmission, gear box and frame.
Up to the plateau and a potential route along the edge to the northwest corner of the top of the Ravine trail.

On the plateau 4-5 deer ran away northeast. I brought a saw and cleared some of the tangle of the broken ash top on the West Dune trail. Paraphrasing Robert Frost.. "something there is that doesn't love a trail.. that sends the crashing tree top and drops the tangling brier".
The old slow moving mangy bitch was south of the Grandfather cottonwood on the south side of the Dune. I think a trail can be made from the post by the Grandfather south. I need to blue blaze the tops of the old orange posts out in the western sedges.

Good time to think about why the smaller separate beds of sedge are distributed where they are.. and to see the zones of Lonicera Japanese honeysuckle (putting out new green leaves). The well defined contours/ elevation limits ( a few vertical centimeters) of flood inundation vs survival and growth.

Norma the Leucistic Red-Tailed Hawk

Down by the SW Gate I watched Norma, the leucistic Red-Tailed Hawk circling and hunting over the Woods and Pott's Dairy Farm.
South of the SW gate there are bright red translucent berries of a small Cocculus vine.

In the Woods, new green leaves of Lonicera japonica, Japanese Honeysuckle are sprouting from stems. Many of the tallest trees have lost 90% of their leaves. Along the South Service Road tall white daisies are still blooming. Some yellow small sulphurs and small acridid spur-throated grasshoppers are flying low over the ground.

On the new Tree Loop I numbered 49 trees with blue plumber's tape.. sixteen spp. (I think). I need some help with a couple of the Carya and Quercus. Need a few more spp. sycamore, red and white mulberry, catalpa, soapberry, etc.

Golden Leaves Raining Down

First time back to the Woods after Monday night's great 2 inch rain. At 10 AM I entered the Woods through the SW Gate. Clear blue sky, high 50's; 15 MPH wind; beautiful day.
The yellow gold leaves were streaming down from the trees. This week is likely going to be the week with the greatest leaf drop. Some hackberry maintain full green crowns. Most trees, green ash, elm, hackberry, are dropping leaves. Wonder if the now-green trees are genetically always late leaf droppers.. or if their roots had more moisture this summer.. or something else. Areas of the Woods are blanketed with beautiful yellow.. the deepest and richest yellow are the pecan leaves.
Ponds have more water: the West Pond looked full size again for the first time since this summer. Depth was 2.26 feet. Southern leopard frog was calling there at 4:00. The East Pond was good too but not full size yet. Depth was 0.48 feet.
Out on the new Tree Loop (north eastern leg) I saw again a large black Meloid oil beetle. Wonder why they are out this time of the year?
The rain Monday had pushed rafts of leaves and small woody plant parts westward in drifts. The floods had gone nearly all the way to the SW Gate from the Beaver Dam. The standing water was all gone from the forest floor. The western wash had full pools but no water flowing past the Isld Crossing.
Later in the day 2 PM I returned to the Woods with Jackson H, Claire C, Emily K and Heather M.
Jackson commented book by David Wardle, Communities and Ecosystems discusses variation in decomposition communities below various trees. Emily and Claire found a nice Anax junius green darner hanging on to a young green ash east of the Elm Bridge. It was likely very near death by old age as it did not attempt to fly away as Emily picked it up by hand. Beautiful colors and odd looking bubbles of fluid (water) visible through the cuticle in the anterior thorax.

Juniper berries are down in profusion by large juniper at junction of Pipeline Trail and Escarpment Trail.
Three deer in the central Woods W. of the white trail in the morning and one buck W. end of dune. Three deer in the afternoon in the SW Woods along the Main SW Trail.
I blue blazed the new Tree Trail and now need to tag all the trees with numbers and prepare an identification guide.

Large green ash top broken across and blocking N end of W. Dune Trail.. need saw. There is still a lot of tree breakage in these woods. I wonder which tree spp. and diameter classes are breaking most commonly. What is the principal cause.. wind, ice, rot?

Update on Rain Totals

Mark A at Weather Service helped me update rainfall totals for past several rains with totals recorded there at junction Jenkins and Hwy 9 ( a few hundred meters from Oliver's Woods).
09/16 .09 inch
09/17 .52
09/18 .39

10/09 1.91
10/10 1.61

10/27 .34
10/28 .33

11/03 .03

11/7
11/8 2.02 inch

Earthquake Autumn

Last night the 5th Nov at 10:55 central OK had a 5.6 earthquake - strongest in state history. I went to the Woods this Sunday morning the 6th to see if any trees had toppled. (The house had shaken strongly). By the Ponds entrance the Woods had an autumn smell of new fallen leaves. The West pond had 0.4 feet of water and a few adult dragonflies flying.
I walked the Ravine Trail eastward and saw no significant blowdown from the strong north wind gusts earlier this week. West of the East Pond there was a large area of fresh catalpa leaves down. They look to have all fallen in a brief 1-2 day period.. crackling underfoot. West of Island Crossing 50 m there is a larger area of fresh yellow ash leaves recently down. I wonder how long the leaves hold their color after falling. The East Pond center was wet but no open water.
I measured the new Tree Loop and it is 400 m, or a quarter mile (blue-topped cedar stakes at 50 m intervals). 200 m from the beginning at the white survey stone to the junction with the Escarpment Trail and 200 m back to the NE Gate. The route is clear but needs a pass with a mower or lots of lopper work or both to clear a 1 m wide swathe.
At the southern end of the South Central trail a green ash in poor health is flushing fresh new green leaves. An out of whack stress crop.. that may either be the last hurrah.. or a chance to create a little more photosynthate for the winter ahead.
By Elm Bridge a raucous half dozen crows were actively mobbing a young hawk.. set up quite a din and flew right after the hawk, close on its tail as it flew northwest. West of East Pond a nice 3-4 foot long black snake was stretched out 3 m up in some small trees by a taller green ash. It didn't move and I enjoyed watching it for a while. I saw two young deer that dashed away.

Tree Tutorial Loop Path Set

Saturday afternoon.. pleasant windy day (62F); went to the Woods, the NE Gate, with saw and loppers to work on routing the tree tutorial loop trail. The route is now established. A few larger logs needed cutting, and there is substantial lopper work remaining; but the route is set. Starting from the NE Gate, left by the white survey stone, the route travels up into the more diverse young forest and heads south southeast to a point just west of the old barbed wire fence at the edge of the mowed hay field. Then the loop curves back west to join the main Escarpment Trail at the top of the hill just south of the largest walnut.

This should be a good loop with diversity. It will be fun to identify and number young trees as species examples along the route.

Friday Clearing Trail

I took saw to the NE Gate this Friday afternoon. Cool, clear, still, pleasant afternoon (58F). I cleared the ash snag log broken across southwest end of EW Fence Line trail and half a dozen other logs sinking lower and blocking the trail. I repainted the pink blazes on the SE trails down to the Service Rd. and back to Barney Jct.
At Fence Corner, I met Clay and Faith from Rybz's class out working on their project. Two deer down by the SW corner of the Woods. Wednesday the 2nd was a very windy day with gusts over 40 mph. I expected to see more debris.. but the strong winds were from the north and the Woods are sheltered by the escarpment. I saw a few small oak branches with green leaves torn from the big bur oak #100 (one of the two friends). Everything else that was down, seemed like old small branches that had died previously and only now were being knocked down. I should check the exposed upper Ravine Trail.
Lots of pretty, light butter-yellow ash leaves coming down now. The Woods' floor is alive with color and light. I had the tune "The Ash Grove" in my head. I stopped and listened to the still-green, full canopy of leaves on the grandfather cottonwood, rustling in the wind.
Pile of fresh dove? feathers on the ground beneath Buzzard Roost looked like a predator had caught a bird. Crossing over the Dune 50 feet south there was a single dove flying south with me and I wondered if this was the mate of the bird that had been killed and eaten. I wonder if Ligustrum privet will act like exotic gorse in NZ - as a nurse plant allowing other spp. (green ash etc..) to grow up under it; or if it will exclude others and take over area exclusively via competition for light water etc or allelopathy. Some water in the Western Wash but none flowing. The Elm Bridge area is dry. The red pit-fall dish by the base of the big pecan snag SW of Tall Stump had been dug up by animal and left. Curious who owns this? No sign or sound or track of dogs - good.

Gentle rain, Coprinus and leaves starting to fall

Gentle 0.68 in rain yesterday and last night. The West Pond is up to 0.45 foot and was quiet.. no dragonflies this evening. It was cool, high 50's. The East Pond is 0.05 foot. I thought I heard a frog call by the East Pond. No turtles visible.
One whitetail heading east near the Bur Oak bridge. Water flowing slowly past the Elm Bridge.
Near whitewash location on TransOWP .. and closer to second largest cottonwood a squawk from a great blue heron I disturbed roosting in the tree tops. A young mid size (red-shouldered?) hawk fluttered a short distance.. mottled breast, short juvenile(?)
tail same location.. just west of the second largest cottonwood.
Bright rich red Virginia Creeper Parthenosiscus leaves are starting to fall.. as are light butter yellow green ash leaves. Odd phenology this autumn with some trees reflushing new leaves early autumn after heat of summer.

30 + Coprinus comatus -like shaggy manes all over woods northeast of Beaver Dam. Great cluster of them around dead elm with bark starting to shuff off.

I refreshed white paint trail blazes. Cleared a fair amount of new fallen small branches/ small trees across trail from storm. Check NWS Mesonet and see what precip they recorded for the storm on Jenkins.

Earlier in week, Monday 24 Oct Liz and Jobin and I walked Ravine Trail to Northern Loop to Creekside Trail to Elm Bridge.. west to Fence Corner, Two Pecan Trail, Trans OWP and back out via Ponds Trail looking at big trees with potential as distinctly different snail habitats.. under different spp. of trees. Along the foot of the escarpment east and west of big tree #148 Liz commented abundant grass Chasmanthium 'fish on a line' on the slope indicated the area of a seep.

Day after Autumn Rain

Brief walk in from SW Gate to see effects of rain yesterday - not much. The soil was thoroughly wetted and the bare soil roughened but no sign of washing or flooding west of Beaver Dam. Now a few gallons of open water in the East Pond (5 deer fifty feet SE of the pond). The NW Pond had risen from 0.36 feet to 0.41 feet. No sign of the snapping turtle. I am sure I heard a frog jump into the water as I approached. The Eastern Wash was running barely past the Elm Bridge. Through the Woods along the EW Fence Trail white Eupatorium boneset was blooming. On the western edge along Chautauqua white asters were in bloom. Some Clematis had bloomed again by the SW Gate. Poison ivy berries were golden and leaves of some P. ivy were turning golden red. The trumpet vine pods were full mature and green.

Woods waiting for rain and it comes.

Mid afternoon Saturday Matt W. and I enter NE Gate. Walked around the proposed Tree Tutorial loop. Need to set path so we can begin temp labels of species for every tree along path.. later select down to 2-3 individuals per species.. Start next Sunday?
Woods are dry-ish. West Pond down to 0.36 feet. Snapping turtle there not moving. White tailed doe and Great Blue Heron (in trees above) there at 6 PM. Strong North winds on the 18th brought down many small twigs and branches.. some of the crown dieback from summer heat and drought..no major blow down.
I re-painted yellow dots on the Main SW trail. Some improvement in debris along South Boundary trail after Steve Womack supervisor, sent in man to help pick up.. much more to go. I told Dan Hofstedter(?) I would bring class to do moths but rain washed us out.
Armadillo or skunk disturbed litter and soil in substantial patch near the west fence line. Recurring whitewash 15-20 feet west of tree #118 on Trans OWP trail (just west of small metal debris).
Washing of Main SW trail from flood after 3 inch rain on the 9th is evident in sandy soil stripped clean of leaf litter along trail.
Should set motion detection camera on West Dune Trail at south end of dune top where small animal trail moves northeast into brush.
Need saw to clear snag log broken across southwest end of EW Fence Line trail.

At 7 PM sharp fast 48/100ths rain arrives.

Turtles Alive.. and Dragonfly Party

After the past 36 hours of good soaking rains (385/100ths inches) I went to the NW entrance to the Woods to see the ponds. They are back! The West Pond now shows 1.2 feet depth. Lolling around in the shallow warm new water was an obviously delighted big snapper turtle.. if they can ever be delighted. I imagined it breaking a four month long summer estivation.. probably hungry!

There was also a veritable swarm of dragonflies..mostly in pairs.. males holding onto females that were busy laying eggs in the water. There were several pairs of Anax junius Aeshnids and several pairs of smaller red Sympetrum.. and there were a dozen or more smaller single dragonflies chasing each other ..merry mayhem.

At the eastern pond.. all was quiet.. less water there 0.4 on the gauge.. but to my surprise there was a snapper turtle there too!

Walking back I saw a 3 toed box turtle out 20 feet west of the big pecan #122 at the south turning of the trail.

Down at the Beaver Dam water was slowly draining out of the Woods.. but the Main SW Trail was not as broadly flooded as I expected.. the water was mostly 2 meters or less wide and ankle deep. It was clear the flood had been wider but most of the inundated ground was drying out now. An excellent good drink for the trees and the soil.

Marvelous Rain

Great Rain overnight.. all night long.. mostly all been gentle.. and almost all has soaked deep into the dry ground.

I went to the Woods 8 AM to see what had happened. It was marvelous. Everything had changed overnight, the color of everything, the smells. There was actually a small amount of water in the West Pond maybe 20-30 gallons pooled up maybe an inch deep ..an area the size of 8 or 9 bathtubs. The East pond had the same amount but deeper.. actually registering 0.09 feet of water on the new staff gauge there.

The water in the Western wash was flowing well enough that some of it had begun to back up above the Beaver Dam, into the SW woods. There, near the old grandfather hollow cottonwood, I heard a puzzling and amusing thing, There was an approx. 40 cm DBH, middle age green ash tree near the moving front of the water, as water was slowly moving west across the floor of the woods. From the base of the tree there was a very audible gurgling sound.. like a soda straw sucking away at the last bit of a drink from a cup. I scooped away the leaves at the base of the tree and listened. It continued. I walked around the moving front of water. None of the other trees were making the sound. I listened for five minutes..then went on west across the west dune trail. I came back 15 minutes later and the tree was still gurgling just as audibly. Quite remarkable and puzzling.

A white-tail deer I encountered seemed interested I was there at that hour but not alarmed. She sat 50 feet away from me chewing her cud.. and didn't bother to stand and sprint away.

Two younger yearlings in the eastern woods dashed and sprinted along the steep slope of the escarpment and some squirrels scolded the disturbance.

The jelly ear fungi are rehydrated and looking full and fresh on the old ash snag east of the east pond.

Rain off and on most the afternoon. Now with the rain clearing off to the east tonight we've had a total of 385 hundredths.

TGFR the rain is here

Saturday morning early I took the saw via the SW gate along the Two Friends Trail to the small pit. There I cleared away the redbud trunk and vines that had broken and blocked the trail. South I cut away a dead cedar that blocked the trail to the Boundary fence. I saw one deer. The Woods were very dry.

Between 4 and 5 PM the rain began - a gentle 1/10 inch.. perfect to wet the soil and soak in. An hour later the rain strengthened. By 8 o'clock we had more than an inch. It looks like it may continue for most of 24 hours if we're lucky. We need 16 inches to end the drought, according to the NOAA Palmer Drought Index data. Norman, normal total annual precip = 37 inches.

Stressed Elms and Hackberry Emperors

Monday 3 October went to the Woods at 6 PM to measure the distance to the new (old thin) rebar Ana found in line with Rice's mid 1960's plots' south line. The rebar she found and flagged appears to be directly in line with the other rebar of the south line.. and is 250 feet east of the previous eastern most rebar on the south line. If the western end of the line is where we were guessing, the southern line now would be about 427' feet in length. The student papers in Rice's class describe a one acre plot 441 ft by 99 ft. This looks like it is the right length and likely is the lost SE corner. Need to look north now 99 feet for the lost NE corner.

Leaving the Woods on the SW Trail at dragonfly corner an elm there had hundreds of hackberry emperor butterflies clustered on the stem. I assume the elm is stressed and producing flux..sugary sap attracting the butterflies to feed. It looks kind of amazing. No deer, dogs or turtles sighted in this brief hour.

Armadillo deer and the Woods

Good gentle rain this past several days.. 82/100 inch. I checked the Woods this Sunday afternoon at 430.. no water in the Ponds..but there is water in the Wash. It is dry before the Elm bridge but there are long pools 'upstream'. Interesting phenology now..after the hot dry summer, with the return of rains, some plants are flushing new leaves.. last week of September. Ana reports seeing several turtles in the Woods recently. It is as if life in the Woods was put on hold.. while it was being seriously tested with drought and heat.. killing many trees.. and now with rain, plants are producing new leaves.. getting whatever photosynthate may be possible before autumn/ winter.
I ran into Botany lab group in class with Rybz: Nate, Cassie, Katie and Hilary measuring diameters in tree plots along the Main SW trail near Jct with East West Trail. Good to know classes are using the Woods.
Elephant's foot Elephantopus purple flowers beginning to be produced. White flowered Polygonum also blooming on dry sites.
Need chainsaw to clear overhead broken redbud mess by pit SW along West Dune Trail.
I encountered tree or four deer between the East and West ponds (basin).
I found an armadillo working its way busily.. but without concern, up slope above west pond. A second sighting or second armadillo along the eastern end of the Northern Loop moved off, then continued to forage through the leaf pack a few feet away. Looks like armadillos have dug up a large area near the west end of the Northern Loop.

Autumn Rains and New Life

Out to the Woods (NW Gate by Ponds) this evening at 7 after 83/100 inch life-giving rain today.. very gentle and slow for hours then more and heavier; so, little run-off.. the Woods and the surrounding land need so much more; but this is the start. Many trees did not survive the heat and drought of this summer. Now it is over.
Walking across the Woods the rich smells are of freshly fallen and wet leaves beginning to decay. At the Elm Bridge the Wash is flowing slowly but full.. no spillage across the levee. The curled drooping leaves of Symphoricarpos, Lonicera and green ash are extending themselves again. The leaf tissue is old but now has vital water it has lacked. Three deer leap and stop along the Northern Loop heading eastward. No water in the ponds but they are damp and will soon begin to refill. Thursday evening before the rains I took a second 4x4 cedar post to the Woods.. this one to the center of the East Pond. On posts in both the East and West Pond we now have staff water gauges (donation from Bob Nairn) attached so that changes in water depth can be measured. Each gauge has a range of 3 feet demarcated in tenths of a foot from zero at the pond bottom. As I departed the Woods Friday, Heather Ketchum's special forensic class was gathered at the NW Gate conducting a mock 'crime scene' investigation with dead bloated pigs and 6 crime scenes. She introduced me to Kent Buehler, forensic archaeologist at OU. I mentioned the grave like depression at the south end of the W Dune Trail in the SW corner of the Woods. He said he would have a look.

Walnuts and Dry Woods

Friday Sept 9, out to the Woods with Barbara F, OK State Survey coordinator and USDA to look for walnut thousand canker Geosmithia and walk the Woods. Found largish walnut tree at top of pipeline trail dead looking .. won't know for sure until spring. Barbara sampled other walnut green branches along the Trans OWP trail. We talked about setting some other monitoring traps and using the Lindgren traps. Found Ana T working on tree plots by SW quarter. Trees in the SW quarter (NW end of dune) are showing significant mortality and leaf drop. Hard time for many of the trees in the Woods. The natural world here is holding its breath, waiting for rain.

Marvelous Wonderful Day

Sunday the super hot weather of this long summer broke and today has been a delightful day..high temp 79F. I went to the Woods in the afternoon from the NE Gate. There was one deer in the upper NE forest area; two more deer west of the East Pond. Lot of work to do to clear a tree tutorial trail route.. maybe with Elizabeth N.
I refreshed orange, green and blue blazes across the Woods and marked 3 of Carpenter's steel rods with blue paint at top.

I drove around to the SW Gate and painted fresh blazes on the Main SW trail. I measured north from Carpenter's C10 stake 200 feet and did not find another rod. Another 200 feet north is the new-found, previously buried post C8. North 200 feet more in sedges is C7. West 200 feet is the fence line between trees #66 & #67. No Carpenter post visible in jumbled fallen junipers. Old Gate Carpenter post will be B7.

The End is Near

Forecast predicts an abrupt end of super hot days tonight with passage of a northern front. Early 7:30 I met Elizabeth N and we entered the NE Gate; walked down to the Elm Bridge; across to Fence corner; south to H10; west to Dune Trail; up to Main South trail; west to SW Gate; back east to C10 and north to hit the Trans OWP; west to Ponds and east along Northern Loop to exit up Pipeline.
We saw one box turtle north of the West Pond. There were 4-5 older whitetail deer.. one doe 20 feet away watched us unconcernedly and then scratched its ear. There were 2-3 yearlings dashing away up in the NE Woods.
Pecans starting to come down. We passed a small pit fall trap at the base of big pecan snag west of Tall Stump.. and saw Anna's tree plot on the South Boundary trail with yellow flagging on each tree.
We saw understory hackberry and green ash dying at Barney Jct.
Elizabeth is interested in creating a tree tutorial trail in the Woods and we talked about how to identify each tree in a NE section of the Woods.
One yellow lab stray dog up with young yearling deer in NE Woods.

Hotter than !%$&#&^%$* (continued)

Today continued hot 105F.. 55 days over 100F this summer.. new (or near?) record.. plus 7 more days at 99. More 100+ coming. Trees in OWP are dying. Green ash, some elm, some hackberry.. young 20-30 yr old trees in the understory and along NW end of dune.
Out to the Woods this Saturday morning in the NW entrance. I dug a two foot hole in the center of the dry west pond and planted an 8 foot 4x4 inch cedar post for a staff gauge (donation from Bob Nairn). Goal is to get gauge set to monitor changes in water depth (when water returns). Dry caramel brown-colored organic mud in west pond bottom, above wet black muck/ mud about 6 inches down. Took aluminum pole to east pond for same purpose. I marked it off in half foot lengths. Top of each orange paint band at bottom of blue tape interface equals half foot marks. Pole has 10 increments for 5 feet from bottom of dry pond to top of pole. Borrowed bolt cutters from George and cut away fence wire across trails. A week ago discovered another Carpenter post laying flat and partly buried along the Main Southwest Trail at the blue arrow tree. Should be about location of B9 on Carpenter's original grid.. approx 200' east of Chautauqua fence (paced). I took sledge hammer and drove post back in place.

Returned late at 7 PM to finish. One seed tick, one mosquito by East Pond, no deer. Dogs have returned to Woods. Chris S. at Treatment Plant says he saw pack two days ago in the Woods. I heard dog(s) howling in southeast Woods. Tibicen dog day cicadas are singing. Still several Catocala moths on pecan by Tall Stump and several Hackberry emperors on tree boles.

Mapping Mornings

August 14 Sunday morning I met Delong Zhao at the SW Gate 7:30 AM to map the Woods by GPS. Over the next 3 hours we crisscrossed the Woods walking every trail. Delong recorded latitude and longitude for 117 waypoints. Most of these were the blue topped cedar stakes I recently placed at 50 m intervals along the trails and 19 steel posts placed on a 200 foot grid by Carpenter mid 1950's (we missed two I know of). There are likely another 10-20 that can be found.
We encountered 4 Terrapene carolina three-toed box turtles and 3-4 white-tailed deer. The turtles have been mostly missing since the rains and mulberries of late May.
Small ticks are starting to come back; but not too badly. No mosquitoes at all. Small cloud of a dozen hackberry emperor butterflies on trees 10 m west of Island Crossing.. maybe on drought stressed trees(?)

August 16 Tuesday morning Ana and I went to find the lines of Elroy Rice's mid 1960's tree plots. The northern plot's western border is parallel and adjacent to Chautauqua according to unpublished papers of Olmstead and Jenssen, students in Rice's botany 1966 class.. and the 1970 published map of Abdul-Wahab. There are thin steel rebar posts placed in two east west running lines 100 feet apart that look like they could be the north and south boundaries..but the east end of the plot is not clear. Abdul-Wahab's map, if drawn to scale, suggests plot may be about 330 feet long. Olmstead and Jenssen both describe a one acre rectangle 147 m or 441 feet long. There was a complete census of trees in this plot conducted then. The stand has changed a great deal over the past 40-45 years. Dense young green ash regeneration is perhaps 20-30 years old. Much of that is dead standing now.. likely from run-off and flooding associated with the 2000 paving of the Lloyd Noble parking area (doubled size of lot). Grazing of 14 head of livestock was terminated in 1960. The southern plot with it's long axis running along Chautauqua has not been found yet; but the vegetation there currently (many dead toppled Juniperus under Ulmus, Celtis, Diospyros and some Quercus) matches expectation.

Marvelous Morning

This morning after consecutive nights with 0.9 and 0.7 inches of rain I went to the Woods early. I entered the SW Gate and took the South Boundary Trail. I placed cedar stakes topped with blue tape at 50 m intervals from the start to the end of the trail at the H 10 post; then north with stakes along the NS Fence Line trail to Fence Corner.. all done. Then I started at the top of Hackberry Alley on the Trans OWP green trail and placed cedar stakes east to Burr Oak Bridge and west to the Ponds Trail entrance.

The West Pond is still dry, although now the cracks in the mud are filled with water. The East Pond is dry except for a fist-sized pocket of open water in the center. Now is the time to get the water depth measuring stick placed in the pond.

There are many understory trees, elms and green ash mostly, up to 20 or 30 feet tall that may have died with the heat and drought of the past 8 weeks - the 'Heat Dome'. Their leaves are all dead and are hanging on the tree. It looks as though the tree could not form an abscission layer. It will be interesting to see if any of these recover and flush new leaves next spring. It looks like the larger canopy dominants are all OK.. roots probably went deeper. There are a lot of leaves down.. maybe 25 % of the canopy. There is a pleasant smell of fall and early leaf decomposition.

The rains have sprouted many quick small mushrooms and ascomycetes: Auricularia pig's ears etc. It should be good watching for fungi the next 2-3 days.

The Western Wash was flowing. Water was flowing slowly past the Elm Bridge 4-5 inches deep. Water was flowing along the South Boundary west from posts H10 to G10 and then south. Water extended 50 meters in a shallow ditch up the Ragweed Delta.

I saw two deer up by the north central area and around the west side of the Dune. The trees along the west side of the dune are nearer complete defoliation. The sunlight brightly lights the forest floor on the dune's west end like it was early spring.

On the NS Fence Line I encountered a young armadillo 6 feet away. He jumped to the side but then re-commenced foraging 3-4 feet away from where I stood. Amazing to watch.

Dry and Heat, Woods Wilting

Saturday morning out in the Woods before 8 AM to beat the heat.. already mid 80's. This July is the hottest in Norman in 100 years. Since June 13 we have been over 100 F all but 10 of last 45 days.. 26/ 30 days over 100 F in July. Along the west fence facing Chautauqua the orange trumpet vine are in full flower, with some green crescent-moon seed pods forming. I drove in past the new trash station to enter the Woods at the South center entrance trail.

Woods had the pleasant smell of new fallen leaves. Across the Woods, trees are shedding leaves.. maybe 5-10 % of the canopy. Elms, redbuds, maples (particularly), hackberries, a few oak leaves were beginning to cover the Woods floor. Most understory herbaceous vegetation is drooped and wilting. Interesting to contemplate the change from the flooded Woods of late May.

I carried a saw and cleared out eight or nine fallen trees and associated grapevines, that had settled or broken across the trails. I walked almost all the trails except the southeast corner.

One cottontail rabbit southwest of the West Dune trail. No turtles. One deer snorting east of the East Pond. One stray female dog, no collar, small blond brown lab/mutt, sleeping in the big box culvert under the northern sewage line. North of there, between the two big culverts, there was a large rectangular pool full of water.. Odonata zooming around..lots of life. No water in the wash below or elsewhere in Woods. Accipiter (?) ~ 50 m west of two or three trees with ivy. Observed adult flying in and heard young bird calling for an hour or more as I walked.

The East and West Ponds were both dry. First time I have seen that. The bed of the East Pond is much tracked and dug up near the center where animals have been looking for water or food. The bed of the West Pond was divided into thick, irregular, quarter-square-meter polygons.. soft, sort of spongy, wet soil on the underside. Small fist-sized pocket of open water in the shade where an animal had excavated a shallow hole.

Snapper turtles and others likely estivating dug under shelf of roots on south side of pond.

The microarthropod fauna and microbial communities in the moist cool deep crevices between the soil polygons would be interesting to investigate. The same earth polygons but thinner, are in many places through the Woods.. diurnal refugia.

Big white Dynastes Hercules beetle(?) larva under rotting ash cut on North South trail. Lots of big feathers, smaller down and poop whitewash at south end of beaver dam from vulture roost in snag there. No mosquitoes observed..no ticks. Many Tibicen Dog-day cicadas singing. One landed on my walking stick. Spider webs across trails not too abundant.. more of the Aurantia (?). I saw no Micrathena. Fairly abundant silken ground nests of spiders in SW corner.

On West Dune trail Opuntia are yellowing..looking poor and Cnidoscolus are still growing and blooming despite my attempts to cut away. Little or nothing in bloom. Symphoricarpos buckbrush and even young Privet are wilting.

Now just over 100 F at 3 PM.

Early July walk

3 July 2011 I rose early and entered the NE gate at 8 AM to beat the heat of the day.
Trails in good shape without much blockage despite powerful storm down burst that hit Norman 14 June.
It has been an exceptionally hot and dry June. The Eleagnus at the jct of Escarpment trail and Pipeline was wilting with drooping leaves. There was still a pool of water 20-30 ft long N of the Elm Bridge. The East pond has shrunk to a 10 x 3 foot by 2 inch deep remnant full of trapped Gambusia. The west pond has a large dry/ mud band around the perimeter..maybe a third to a half the normal water surface. I saw one slider turtle moving on the far side. No mosquitoes at all. Few ticks. Turtle trap is where??
Crossing the Dune Trail the mystery large bird(s) I have heard recently taking off but not seen.. they were there today.. turkey vultures. There is a lot of white wash. It looks like the spot has become a regular roost for a group of 5-6 of them.
Along Woods paths there are now lots of spider webs on the ground and a good many across the trail..but not obnoxious. I saw a few Micrathena..they seem to be more late summer spiders.. including one down in the wash that looked like it was in the process of being attacked/ plucked out of its web by Sphecid Ammophila until I disrupted events.

One deer south of Escarpment black trail, three deer southeast of East Pond.

Paused for a very pleasant twenty minutes in the new flat cement drainage ditch built north of the new trash station (new station now operating). The cement ditch had lots of easily seen insects crossing to or from the Woods.. I found a large Mydas fly.. one of the largest flies in OK.. I only see once or twice every other year or so.

There was a large wolf spider hanging out on the cooler shady side with a few score young spiderlings on back.

Carabids.. Scarites.. scuttling to the top of the 7 cm high curb and then falling back and climbing again (made it second time); green and multicolor Chlaenius and black Carabus running around; and small mutillid velvet ant, scores of jelly belly sized black scarabs.. very common grass grub.. cricket nymphs, one hollowed out Tibicen cicada killed in metamorphosis; isopods, a few caterpillars and a millipede or two.

Early June walk

4 June 2011 After week away up north (Iowa Lakeside Lab - cool, green); I returned to the Woods. It had been unseasonably warm. The Woods in from the SW gate were loaded with silk net homes of ground spiders.. this one corner more than any place else in the Woods.. maybe 40 m x 40 m.. don't know why..sunny/ dappled shade there, a bit more open. A few more mosquitoes now, but not bad. Abundant cotton from group of big Populus along western wash levee. One box turtle 50 feet west of beaver dam. Same location pile of feathers from flicker(?) eaten. No deer. Big flapping bird.. vulture - still not seen, continues to hangout in trees above south end of beaver dam.. whitewash on the ground there. Flood waters of last month help keep some trails open by flowing along the path (e.g. Barney Jct. trail). E. Pond is now much smaller. I need to place a measuring post there for water depth. Northern Loop becoming overgrown with understory..needs clearing. Need saw two places: Northern Loop by big pecan and Liriope patch & N-S fence line trail for fallen juniper.

Skunk, Measuring SE Wash

At 4:30 today I entered the Woods at the NE Gate on a warm (90F) humid day. Hiked to the Elm Bridge. Half inch of rain three days earlier on the 24th had brought a quick flood to the Wash. The flood cut west from below Elm Bridge flowing out of banks parallel and south of the E-W Fence Line. With warmth and wind, all (almost)of the standing water in the Woods was gone. The Wash today was still full but barely moving past the Elm Bridge.
I measured the SE Wash Trail from the South Service Road north 200 m to jct with E-W Fence Line Trail. Lot of tracks of coons (?) and deer. Mosquitoes were mild (4-5) with mild DEET. There will be more soon. There were numerous brilliant green Cicindela sexguttata(?) along the damp trail.. probably starting burrows for young in soft soil as puddles dry. At Post One (50 m N of Service Road) I had a lengthy encounter with a small young striped skunk. I surprised it digging in damp rotting leaves. Up went the tail.. and it stayed up. The skunk was 15-20 feet from me.. I was probably within its range. After a few minutes of unmoving stand-off, the skunk began energetically and threateningly to back away. Facing me, tail up it made short backwards shuffle jumps with front feet noisily dragging leaves in a threat display combined with an escape. It backed up against some small down branches blocking it and then after a moment came forward in what looked like a short bluff charge (to within a dozen feet.) I stood and spread my arms wide and growled and the skunk stopped, then began its backwards shuffle jumps again. Two or three more charges and retreats and after maybe ten minutes I moved on down the trail leaving the bold creature in peace.
Returning home I immediately changed and showered leaving my field clothes outside on the hot deck. I removed eleven ticks.. 5 tiny seed ticks and 6 larger.

Rediscovering Oklahoma in the Woods

I returned to the SW Gate this morning at 9. The Lonicera Japanese honeysuckle bloom is just about gone. The Cornus dogwood bloom is coming in to peak.

All through the southwestern corner, the Woods are draining and drying. I located some deeper pools along the trails where a water depth gauge stick might be usefully placed to start keeping records of the extent and length of inundation.

Up on the west Dune top a brilliant black blue pompilid fidgeted over the ground looking for spider prey. I cut the Cnidoscolus bull nettle leaves away from the Opuntia.. and wondered how many of my ecology students would know the trees, common plants and animals along this trail. Young scientists today could launch themselves into days of discovery just as Arthur Ortenburger did 1920-1930. In the process they could create an identity and much happiness for themselves. Students arriving at university as freshmen could be exposed to the natural history and diversity here locally in the county by visits to the Woods and Canadian River.

The state has changed. In many cases what could be documented are the flora and fauna of reserves, like Oliver's Woods now surrounded by highways that did not exist 90 years ago. Invasives have arrived, climate is shifting, successional processes have acted on abandoned farm fields, habitat has been fragmented, converted, exurbanized and reduced. The basic natural history of the state needs re-documenting. We have the population to do it now.. 3.7 million.

Across the Dune trail 3 whitetail deer splash and dash away. By the odd burial pit(?) like feature, a box turtle wanders south.

Second Turtle, Water Draining from Woods

Saturday morning, clear sunny, 75F light 8 mph wind. South Boundary trail is draining quickly at 10 AM. The trail through some low areas between A10 and C10 is still covered in water. East it is out of the water until back closer to G10. One small dytiscid zooming in sepia colored water.
Another small box turtle by old OWP sign. Enjoyed one black mulberry, mostly ripe. Kingfisher posted at G10. Five to six MS kites over head.

Flood, Turtle, Invertebrates in High Ground Refugia

Remarkable and Marvelous

Today we had 4.6 inches rain in 12 hours (midnight to noon). By afternoon the southern 15-20% and western 15-20% of the Woods were flooded- depths 18-30 “ (knee deep to waist deep) with many acre feet of water. (Acre foot = ~326,000 gal.) Marvelous what has happened..every species of centipede, pink millipedes, many thousands of isopods are clustered together on high ground, stumps, branch stobs, sticks. Normally hidden creatures, in a newly drowned forest, earthworms, ground beetles, stink bugs, harvestmen, snails, ants.. the invertebrates have been revealed and they are tightly jammed together in their refugia, wherever there is high ground. In a mutual non-aggression pact predators and prey are jammed together with no evidence of predation as the water rises.
Up on the trunks of trees between chinks of bark there are pentatomids, carabids and more.. a bright red & midnight blue melyrid, waiting out the rain and the rising water.
Bark gleaning birds can/ will have a feast.

OU by flooding the forest (with runoff from Lloyd Noble arena parking lot) sets up conditions for an extraordinary survey of Arthropods. Why are the isopods so dominant in numbers?
The flooded area has been dry and then very dry since February snow until recent 2.5 inch rain late April. But it was flooded last year for long enough to exterminate many of the resident macro-invertebrates. The ones there today are good dispersers, survivors and colonizers. (CA isopods were dominant macro invertebrates in disturbed areas.) I see two of the pretty, exotic pale bordered roach. A big Camponotus carpenter ant colony in a rotten green ash is busy transferring larvae from one part of its nest in a large (now floating) punky log to another. Along NS fence line trail there are isolated pools of struggling earthworms and I collect several of the larger bulky and several of the skinny small ones. Be interesting to see if we have the natives still there or if these are the European worms.

What about the vertebrates? snakes? lizards? They all have to climb trees or leave.
I find a young box turtle by a washed out channel near Elm bridge.. first box turtle I've seen this year. In the NE Woods I startle 2 or 3 deer.. loud snorts.

Aleuria red earth cup fungi are new, out on the Northern Loop. Why so red? Attract spore dispersing flies??? but most of its spore dispersal is by wind.

The East Pond is greatly expanded, filled beyond its borders.. extending out to the jct with the Ravine Trail.. an abrupt change in water chemistry and dissolved oxygen.. interesting change for dominant microbial decomposers in the pond.

A few mosquitoes down on the south side of the Woods.. more to come now.

Density of floating twigs, leaves, ash seeds other lignin debris is quite variable. What determines where it will cover the water surface and where it is absent? What are consequences for decomposition and rafts of debris after drying or drainage.. seed beds? invertebrate and fungal decomposition hotbeds?

More Measuring and Mapping

I returned to the Woods (NE Gate) at noon with tape measure and notebook. It was sunny and 80 F. I began adding natural history observations and some tree species at measured distances along the Escarpment Trail. I covered the first 300 ft with more detail. I will try to update this file each time I go to the Woods and can locate features along one of the measured trails. This project could take a long time.. and never be finished.. always more observations to add. I hope this can serve as the data for a Tree Tutorial Trail. The May 7 draft of the file is loaded on the Oliver's Woods web page under the Maps link as Olivers Woods Post-Mapping Project.xlsx

Along the trail in bright sun spots I saw up to a dozen brilliant green tiger beetles Cicindela sexgutata? - individually or in pairs. I saw no deer or dogs or turtles today.

Today at Elm Bridge the Wash was not flowing.. a pool extended to within about 20 feet of the bridge - upstream.
Early cotton was floating down from the big cottonwoods east of the Elm Bridge and collecting in the eastern dry wash below the Elm Bridge. Not what Robert Frost had in mind but it seemed to fit the moment and the place.
"Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow."

Measuring and Mapping the Woods

This afternoon Lance and I began measuring and mapping the Woods trails. Beginning at the NE gate, foot-long stakes cut from cedar branches were placed every 50 meters down to the Elm Bridge (`290 m).. across the orange E-W Fence Trail; past Tall Stump (another 200 m) to the end of the orange trail and the jct with the yellow Main SW Trail (~650 m total).
Then on to the SW Gate for a new zero point and we placed stakes out to the end of the yellow trail at the Beaver Dam (500 m).
Then on to the S Boundary and a new zero at Carpenter's G10 post. We placed stakes north across the white Dune trail to the Dam (100 m) .. then up Hackberry Alley to jct with green Trans OWP trail (340 m total).
We saw no large animals but I thought I heard two deer moving off west of Hackberry Alley. The pools of water along the Main SW trail were almost entirely gone but the soil was quite damp and there was plenty of water all along the Western Wash.
Four tiny seed ticks < 1 mm and one larger young tick.

Owl, Canada Geese and Big Bird

6 PM entry via NE Gate. I took my saw and cleared two large fallen logs from orange trail. Also cut away hackberry tree leaning/ laying over the NS Fence Line Trail.
West Wash was full but still. Water largely drained away from the Main SW Trail.. although there remain some large disconnected pools. No water at Beaver Dam. Up on Dune Trail encountered (heard) large bird taking off..but did not see. Sounded like GB Heron or T Vulture. Earlier I heard owl in the south of the Woods. Canada Geese flying over..
Next day, Friday.. what a difference the wind can make. Strong 20-30 mph winds all day and warm 80+ rapidly dried almost all the open water along the Main SW trail..only one or two small pools left.. and the wind continues tonight. I cleared the path to the big log from the Main SW trail and painted new blazes to clarify. Sweet honeysuckle perfume at SW Gate and elsewhere scattered through the Woods.

Snake Skin Elm Tree

At 6 PM I entered the Woods by the West Pond. After 2.5 inches of rain the Woods are full of bright green new growth. Japanese honeysuckle Lonicera was beginning to bloom, producing its sweet odor in the Woods. I walked to the Ravine Trail and up along it to the East Pond trimming growth along the trails.. Out at Island Crossing, water flowed slowly in the western wash. Floods swept over the island yesterday.. one fresh dog track since then. (Subsequently heard one dog barking in the Woods on the dune near the Grandfather Cottonwood). All the paths were clear, good walking. A hundred feet from the SE end of the Northern Loop I spotted an interesting snake's skin up a meter high on the bark of an elm tree with Virgina Creeper. Odd to think of a snake shedding its skin up in a tree.
From Barney Jct walking east the trail crossed over the braided course of the flood as it entered the Ragweed Delta.. some pools and riffles remained in the Delta.
Upstream to the Beaver Dam, water was flowing slowly the entire distance. Above the Dam, the Woods were slowly draining; but the water was still several inches deep.. all the way to the Grandfather Cottonwood and beyond. For the entire distance the water was covered with rafts of floating debris.. mostly seeds of green ash and elm, old leaves and bits of bark. I wondered about what biological processes were jump started in all this organic debris floating in water.. colonization by oomycetes? Who would the first colonists be? What effects would they have? The soaked organic debris will be piled in rafts when the flood water recedes and will create an interesting mosaic of decomposing damp debris (and associated micro-arthropod population booms) .. and clear bare sandy soil.

Rain Returns

Easter Morning and we awoke with light rain falling.. a miracle of sorts.. after weeks and weeks of drought. The rain gathered and grew heavy at times .. two and a half inches altogether in the day. At five I ducked quickly in the SW Gate to see what it had done in the Woods. Three white tailed deer were in the west side forest near Chautauqua.. looked like young deer. The Auricularia fungi were thick, heavy and fleshy on the hackberry down a short ways in from the gate. The Woods had a wonderful smell of fresh damped leaves as all the soil microbes returned to life by the rain were busy decomposing dead leaves and producing wonderful earth smells. The path was clear almost to Dragonfly corner where there was standing water moving my way. I walked on, in shallow water east until it became too deep. The whole drainage along the main SW Trail was filled with water flowing west from across the Beaver Dam.. flood waters from the Lloyd Noble parking area.. but the water was not red clay colored from the trash transfer site construction. It was turbid but only reasonably so.. mostly clean water moving across the forest floor. Looking out over the slowing filling/ flooding Woods I thought again of the huge change for soil organisms: millipedes, snails, ants, centipedes, ground beetles, earthworms, mites, soil micro-arthropods of all sorts.. and the change for the trees, going from mild drought stress to perhaps some weeks of drowned roots. It will be interesting to see how long the water stays and how deep and wide it is. I should go and check the culvert on the south side and be sure it is not blocked.
I walked across the West Dune trail to near the Grandfather Cottonwood and saw the Woods and the stands of green ash there north filled with water. The trail back along the South Boundary was clear and good walking on my way out..

Raccoon in Big Pecan Snag

4:30 entry via SW Gate on a still mild (60 F) overcast day. Lots of small limbs 1 inch diameter down all over the trails from this past two weeks of strong winds. A couple of medium large diameter snags down across orange trail.. dead green ash by SW end of orange trail and medium large pecan trunk/ branch down east of tall stump. Both require saw.
Followed good sized raccoon down southern Hackberry Alley trail to Tall Stump. It stopped and looked back at me and then scooted SW to big old pecan snag to climb up and in.. probably home.

The forest is very shady today..feels like it has now gone to 90%+ full leaf out.. all fresh summer green leaves. On this one visit the forest now seems transformed to the dense green that conceals and shelters all within it.

The young hawthorn at the northern end of Hackberry Alley now has nice green fruit each the size of a large pearl.

Construction on the new trash transfer station looks like it has moved along and they are ready now to sod in the NE corner with many rolls of sod sitting there ready.

Heard but did not see dog barking at me on dune west of Grandfather cottonwood.. several minutes.. and another (?) dog barking on the escarpment above the western end of the Northern Loop. Heard but did not see one or more deer (presumably) moving south and west of Elm Bridge.

East end of the West Pond now has 10 foot wide exposed pond bottom from drying winds.
One yellow salsify blooming at Island Crossing. Pool there still dry. One prickly Cnidoscolus on dune near Opuntia prickly pear.

Windy

Friday's winds were the strongest prolonged, all-day winds I can remember in Norman. An hour before sunset I went to the NE Gate with the wind gusts still strong enough to wrench a car door out of grasp. A few hundred feet up the trail the shelter of the Woods was remarkable. I met Ana and Luke emerging with collections of flowering Viola, Rosa multiflora and others.
The NE and Central trails had many smaller branches down but no large trunks. The small pool above Island Crossing was now gone, just wet earth..no open water. One cottontail rabbit on the upper NE Escarpment trail.. several robins but no other large animals seen in my loop down to the south center and back up the southeast creek trail.
The Ragweed Delta is growing up with lush grass, Gallium bedstraw, Ambrosia giant ragweed and some other spp.... still just ankle high.
Sunday morning 17 April I took my saw to NW entrance by Rudy's and cleared a heavy hackberry trunk blocking the trail. The winds broke the top out of the tree 25(?) feet up. Farther east along the Trans OWP Trail a large walnut trunk had broken off and smashed into the vegetation along the trail but was not blocking. One squirrel in the Woods. I drove around to the NE Gate and walked in on the new trail (not completed) in the upper younger Woods. Lots of Symphoricarpos coralberry to clear from the southern half of the path. Noticed full new blooms of Lonicera honey suckle near the Bur Oak Bridge.. but a free standing bush with solid trunks.. not L. japonica I think. The blooms look identical. Not the January flowering L. fragrantissima. Noticed Ben & Angie jeep at gate.

Tiger Swallowtail Clusters

Several clusters of big yellow or black tiger swallowtails in the SW Woods this afternoon. They seemed to be in the tree tops around persimmon and other species. Scores of them in a few different places.. mostly near or along the Main SW Trail. I have never seen so many in there. Good walk with grad student Ana T in the Woods this afternoon. We entered via the NE Gate and walked past all 21 of the known Carpenter steel stakes. Ana captured GPS coordinates and promised to send map.
Lots of honey bees collecting water on shore of East Pond. Small group of 3-4 whitetail deer.
New leaves on trees continue to flush out.. estimate that canopy leaves are 35-40% out now. Understory leaves 80-90% leafed out. Woods are very dry..small(er) pool of water remains in W Wash above Island Crossing.
More small branches settling down and needing removal. Yellow Ranunculus and white fleabane like daisy near edge of western seep. Eleagnus Russian Olive is just about bloomed out and gone. White Viburnum shrub blooming along east edge of West Pond. Back home just two seed ticks to remove.

High Winds Little Down

Strong gusting winds 30-45 mph for most of past two days calmed late this afternoon. I went to the Woods 630 PM through SW Gate and found little changed. Small branches scattered across trail here and there, nothing much. Group of 5 whitetail moving southward east of Hackberry Alley. Small pool above Island Crossing suddenly much smaller - the wind, I think. Big Event crew cleared much of the flotsam and jetsam from the wash above the Bur Oak Bridge. Seventy percent? of understory has greened up/ leafed out. The upper canopies of trees are still bare, leafless. One or two small Bradford Pears on east end of Pipeline leafed out there light green leaves early.. before the rest.

Dry Woods Spring Equinox

After a week of unvarying cloudy cool windy days (45 degree highs) the sun finally broke through. I headed to the Woods at the end of the day. It has been a very dry spring but the east and west ponds' water level seems fully normal.

In the evening the eastern woods are pleasantly filled with the sweet smell of Eleagnus Russian Olive in bloom. Saw no deer, no large animals.

All along the South Boundary of the Woods there is a new five foot wide, flat bottom, concrete drain with sloping 5 inch high curb sides. This should have an impact in further isolating the Woods and stopping previous migrations of amphibians, turtles etc..

Saturday (today) walked with Cindy and Jim in from NW entrance and took long winding walk through much of the Woods. Discovered a handsome morel on trail just west of Island Crossing. We discussed possible futures of land at the eastern edge of the Woods with the old compost facility.

Eleagnus Blooming Mid Spring and Tiger Swallowtail

End of day walk in the Woods..in the SW Gate at 6:30. It has been dry and warm.. many days in high 70's/low 80's this month. The understory shrubs Cornus dogwood, young elm, green ash, are beginning to open leaf buds with leaves peaking out..maybe 5-10% of the way. On either side of Hackberry Alley there is a general profusion of early spring green. The Woods are filling again with this year's new leaves.
On the east side, Eleagnus Russian olive is coming into full bloom and the Woods are profused with a subtle lemon scented sweet odor. One female tiger swallowtail flitting by with its broad blue band above the black on the handwing. The earlier wild hawthorn Crataegus viridis flowers are almost all gone now. There is an interesting clump of several old hawthorn at the north end of Hackberry Alley - why? Their heavier musky chaparral odor is now gone.
Along the Creekside Connector trail two morels (regular light mocha color caps) fresh and in good shape. Farther south on the Creekside trail lavender and purple violets with arrow shaped leaves are out with abundant bloom.
No water anywhere in the washes except the small pool above Island Crossing.
Colony of 20 ant lion larval pits 450 feet south of the big walnut at the junction of the Escarpment Trail and the trail down to Burr Oak Bridge. Why so many there?
Skunks or armadillos or both have been foraging extensively turning over the leaf litter on the SW end of the North South fence line. Midway along the South Creekside Trail there is a dead raccoon with Thanatophilus? black carrion beetles and blowfly larvae. The exposed ribs are like a row of wishbones.
Crossing over the crest of the Dune trail the young German shepherd is back and barks at me from 50 away in the brush, then runs away.
At 7:30 there is a marvelous hanging ball of the sun over the horizon.. a brilliant fiery red orange.
The growing season is beginning again in the Woods.

New Morels

Entering via the SW gate I encountered two hefty morels up by tree #45 an old oak snag.. never seen that color before.. the stem chalky white not yellow and the cap a handsome cordovan red brown, not the dark mud brown. The 15/100 inch yesterday damped the soil enough to get them going. No water in the wash, though.. except the small pool above Island Crossing. 6:30-7:30 no deer for recent few excursions. Sun setting at 7:30 with time change last night.

Two weeks of spring

First two weeks of March have been mostly mild, warm and dry. Today at 6 PM I walked from the SW gate along the S Boundary Trail and up across the Western Dune Trail. Approaching from the Dune crossing from the southwest there are a series of small hummocks of soil that are curious. I need to ask Katie K and Jason J what they might be. At the top of the dune two cottontail rabbits sprinted or loped away. At the top of Hackberry Alley there are three hawthorn blooming. Eleagnus Russian olive leaves are more fully out on NE Escarpment Trail. One yellow lab sized dog..no collar with large red sore on left back emerged from under the base of the Burr Oak Bridge.
On the north side across the SW trail I found an old green ash log and sat to observe.
This past Tuesday 8 March Mike and I walked through much of the Woods.. Found Lamium pupureum (not henbit) in bloom by Elm Bridge.. first flower in the Woods for spring. We checked a herp array bucket left open west of the western pond. Three crayfish had fallen in. Liz identifies as Procambarus arcutus. One pulled from bucket went walking away over dry leaves. Interesting that they disperse by walking across dry habitat. Also in the bucket were live Scincella lateralis little brown skink and several millipedes: long thin Julid? and stout Polydesmid; black Meloid beetles Epicauta (?)
Along the trail Mike found Tridopsis (?) snails and several white-tailed deer.

Fragrant Woods and Wildlife

This Sunday morning may be one of the finest days of the entire year in the Woods. The air was soft and warm - high 50's. The sky a low overcast. After the 10 inches of snow (1 inch of water) this month and subsequent quarter inch of rain Thursday the 24th, the ground was soft and springy .. alive with new growth. Where there is bare soil, the early low growth of Stellaria chickweed, Galium bedstraw, something like Erodium heron's bill with dissected leaves and something like Lamium henbit.. all are just beginning ..not over an inch high. Patches of new Festuca fescue? are growing bright green and somewhat taller along the northern portion of the ragweed delta.

The leaves of last year, until a month ago still crunchy dry and brittle, are now matted down on the soil and soft. A small drift of oak leaves behind a fallen log up on the slope gave a rich fragrance of old oak, old barrels, or an old wooden barn in the spring.

Elm flower buds are breaking open. Tapping the branches I released a small puff of pollen. The Lonicera honeysuckle area west of Hackberry alley is visibly greening with the earliest low leaves. Small foraging spiders the size a pea are out moving around on the leafy forest floor. I walked through one strand of gossamer and walked into one small orb web.

South along the N-S fenceline trail I was delighted to find a striped skunk Mephitis mephitis trundling north up the path unaware of me. It stopped 40 feet away from me at Barney Jct. and headed east. I followed it and after a couple hundred feet the skunk looked up and noticed. Up went the tail and after another moment by the big cottonwood it was visiting, it headed east towards, I presume, its home in the cliff of old logs, broken culverts and other junk at the western edge of the old compost facility. Beautiful animal.

I returned south along the N-S fence line trail and found the good-sized area 30-40 square meters.. where the skunk had been hunting.. burrowing under the leaves and into the top inch or two of soil hunting for grubs, beetles and other insects or worms.
West of there, a small group of three deer trotted off towards the beaver dam.
Yesterday, Saturday the 23rd at 4 P.M. there had been two groups..maybe 10 deer total north and east of the SW Gate. There had also been the dog pack crossing the northeast Woods N of the Northern Loop. The same five: two yellow retriever like dogs, two black lab type dogs and the one German shepherd type mutt.

I sat for a while by the tall stump and watched the Woods. I listened to the various birds foraging and singing and noticed the woodpeckers. The Woods there are in a transition. Well distributed, (75-120?) yr old large diameter, pecans, elms and hackberries are breaking down. Their large diameter spreading trunks and limbs weakened by fungi and broken by wind, ice and age - are falling among a thicker growth of small diameter 5-40 yr old green ash, elm, hackberry oak and shrubby viburnums.
Eventually the new smaller diameter trees should become the new canopy and fill the Woods. Disturbance, including borers removing species like the green ash, will alter the succession. Eventually the large open grown trees that once stood in a grazed open floodplain until 1960, will succumb and provide the large snags and hollow down logs used by a new generation of wildlife.

Bright Woods

In the mid afternoon Saturday walked in via the NW gate. Time to go slow and explore..see what the cold and snow of the past fortnight have done. Woods were full of light, and warm. It felt like the first day of spring temperatures.. in the 60's.

By the East Pond a woodpecker drilled several (7-8) holes in a large living grapevine. Each hole is the size of an acorn. I wonder if grapevine wounds are particularly likely to bleed sugary sap and attract insects for the bird.

The East Pond still 95% frozen but all the perimeter has melted. The southern third of the West Pond was frozen.

Heard a kingfisher in the SW Woods and a flicker. Somebody ate a female cardinal. The feathers had fallen from a broken hackberry branch across the trail SE of the bird feeder. At the base of the largest old (oak?) snag just NW of the Pound.. there lay a freshly dead junco..still soft and flexible. The cold and lack of food may have killed it and others..

Fresh spring onions were up 3 inches and longer by the ditch crossing W of the Elm Bridge.
The early new reddish multiflora rose leaves beginning to flush.

Under old rotten log near Elm Bridge a two inch centipede crawled slowly into the cold wood.. under same log, two hibernating snails; and a quarter-sized patch of gold slime mold sporulating. Some new gossamer in the Woods with warm temp.. amazing spiders!.. and one green bottle blow fly out at fence corner.

Water flowing slowly to Elm Bridge and beyond.. the ragweed delta not flooded; but water held in channels there slowly moving.

Ligustrum privet leaves browsed heavily on some plants.. must be survival food in snow. Some rose hips left.. not many. Odd that hackberry berries are all suddenly coming down now after the melting snow especially along the south boundary.. maybe evolved strategy as starvation/ survival food for dispersers after cold or snow when all else is gone?? Some Euonymous leaves look to have died in the cold - the most exposed.. while those slightly more sheltered below are still green.
Idea: measure the aerenchyma butt swell of green ash at ground level vs circumference at 1 meter.. as indicator of frequency of flooding.. should increase to a maximum and then percentage tree mortality should increase where flooding is more common than trees can handle.

No evidence of dog or dog tracks. Four or five deer moving north from the South Boundary across the Dune.

Disturbances in the Woods: Dec. 2000 big pecans, elms and other trees west of the wash between Burr Oak Bridge and Island Crossing down in ice storm.
Dec 2007 ice storm hit all of Norman heavily.

Evening Walk, Snow Going

Out at six for a half hour across the Woods and back at sunset. In the SW Gate and along the Southern Boundary Trail. Snow melting and the Woods 20% uncovered. No dog under the hollow cottonwood.. no fresh tracks there either.
Up the South Creek Trail, the water now drained from all the delta and washout plain, remaining only in the deeper pools of the main channel. No flooding anywhere. At the Elm Bridge no water flowing, only pooled there covered with a white sheet of ice.
The Woods, after six months of increasing drought, have had a good inch deep drink of melting snow... about 10 inches of snow or about 1 inch of water.
Back across the E-W Fence Line trail. Few tracks the entire route.. back to the western sedges. One yearling deer bounded away across the western end of the dune in the near dark. Before, interesting track of (that?) young deer dragging the front of its hooves leaving light lines in the old snow between each hoof print.
Late sunset color on the horizon at 6:30.
The past few days have been the coldest, down to 1F. Tomorrow up to 60F.

Woods Winter Floods

Sunday Feb 6 late in the day I went to see how the Woods were faring with the melting snow.

I walked in the SW entrance and found the Western Wash draining the Lloyd Noble parking lot was running full. At the Elm Bridge the water was a couple feet deep, just below the blue blazed log on the bridge. Walking south along the new South Creek Trail water depth was over the 17 " top of my knee boots and I had to walk a bit west of the trail.

Water had flooded the 100 m long ragweed delta stretching north from the south central boundary; but did not extend to Barney Jct. West the water extended up the wash toward the Beaver Dam but had not reached it. Along the south boundary water drained out towards the main south culvert under the service road. At the culvert it had backed up and had flooded back into the Woods in a 10 " deep pool extending back towards the Dune. Need to clear the vegetation and recent slash/ debris partially blocking the culvert.

Across the flooded area there were scores or hundreds of robins busily foraging in the shallow moving water. I wondered what they could be finding. I also wondered what was happening in the soil, around the roots of the trees, around their mycorrhizal caps with this first flooding water in seven months. What was happening to soil fauna earthworms, insects, mites, millipedes, microarthropods etc..

Southeast of Carpenter's post on the SE corner of the East Pond I found a beautiful dead armadillo in the snow. It looked like it had just died hours earlier. I was surprised at how pink all of its undersides and limbs were. I could see the track it had bulldozed to where it lay, perhaps vainly seeking food under the snow.

Snow melting. Deer's Foot

Russell and I went out at end of day Saturday. The drift by the Ponds Trail entrance was waist high on Russell but all across the south face of the escarpment the snow had melted and thinned to reveal the brown leaves, leaving a patchwork of 60% snow cover and 40% open leaf litter. The flood plain forest floor was still well covered in snow and the two ponds were solid enough to walk across..although thinning around the edges.

Everywhere there were trails of deer. We found new deer beds on the Northern Loop, melted snow where the deer had slept.

Interesting that there was no water flowing in the main Western Wash despite the 0.6 inch of water held in the recent snow and the beginning of the melt.

We walked to the South boundary Trail and there by the old 1960's OWP sign we found a fresh hoof and 4 inches of lower leg of a young deer. A predator or scavenger had brought it there.

The deer continue to be located primarily in the thicker forest east of the east pond.

Many more small passerine birds out foraging than two days ago. Forecast rain should strip away much of snow before more cold and snow arrive later midweek.

Deep cold, deep snow.

Out late morning for a foray into the Woods from the NW Entrance by the Ponds Trail. February first brought deep cold hovering in single digits for a few days and blizzard conditions with several inches of snow. The snowdrift at the trail head was 20 inches deep, over-topping my knee boots. The snow depth along the trail was 3-5 inches.
The west pond was frozen solid enough to allow me to stand in the center and contemplate the trees on the northern edge from a novel perspective. Around the edge of the pond there was an inch of open water as there was at the northwest seep feeding the pond.
I saw numerous deer in the Woods; maybe a dozen or more..moving in small groups of 4-5. Lots of deer tracks in the northern center of the Woods, east of the East Pond.
I found several clusters of deer beds, four or five roughly elliptical beds with the snow melted.

Interesting to see the degree to which the deer are using the blazed trails. I wonder if it is because the trails are open.. or if they recognize and follow the blue paint blazes. No deer tracks at all south of Barney junction along the N-S Fence line trail.

The East Pond is also frozen solidly enough to walk across. I saw no robins, one lone sparrow on the ice at the East Pond. One other human track west of the Western Wash.

The snow reveals the tracks of animals using the base of hollow standing snags for shelter. Need to get Nick to help figure out what they all are.

I encountered the same wild dog in the Woods along the South Boundary Trail and followed it to its den under the big cottonwood log. It ran away barking.

Deep cold, deep snow.

Out late morning for a foray into the Woods from the NW Entrance by the Ponds Trail. February first brought deep cold hovering in single digits for a few days and blizzard conditions with several inches of snow. The snowdrift at the trail head was 20 inches deep, over-topping my knee boots. The snow depth along the trail was 3-5 inches.
The west pond was frozen solid enough to allow me to stand in the center and contemplate the trees on the northern edge from a novel perspective. Around the edge of the pond there was an inch of open water as there was at the northwest seep feeding the pond.
I saw numerous deer in the Woods; maybe a dozen or more..moving in small groups of 4-5. Lots of deer tracks in the northern center of the Woods, east of the East Pond.

Interesting to note the degree to which the deer are using the blazed trails. I wonder if it is just because the trails are open.. or if they are following the blue paint blazes that guide humans. No deer tracks at all south of Barney junction along the N-S Fence line trail.

The East Pond is also frozen solidly enough to walk across. I saw no robins, one lone sparrow on the ice at the East Pond. One other human boot print west of the Western Wash.

Norma the Leucistic Hawk

Chilly Sunday morning birding in OWP with Angie. On ravine trail watched 4-5 white-tailed deer foraging. The bucks were snorting back and forth and flaring their tails. I think they knew we were there but could not smell us or see us well.

On the south boundary trail we watched a pure white red-tailed hawk, Norma, fly away south over the waste water treatment plant. Birds were fairly active until about 10 or 11. We saw golden crowned kinglets, fox sparrows, one great blue heron in the tree tops over the cattails, red shouldered hawks, downy woodpeckers, chickadees, creeper, carolina wren, phoebes, cardinals, redwinged blackbirds, robins galore, blue jays, etc.

Wondering about who eats berries of privet, multiflora rose, symphoricarpos, lonicera, smilax, juniper, euonymus, hackberry.

Picture of Norma above taken by Ben Holt Feb 12 2011 with the comment
"Norma A white "Red"-tailed Hawk and the guardian of South Jenkins, Oliver's Woods, and the Norman, OK Water Treament Plant"