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"

Leucistic Robin and Dead Ducks

Walked through the SW Gate this afternoon at 4. Cloudy quiet, cool (~50F) overcast. Cold front coming.. twenty degrees cooler tomorrow. Found a leucistic robin with odd coloration: mottled.. half white, half brown, tail almost completely black and brown with one splotch of white. Eye was black, beak was bright yellow orange, breast was mostly normal russet red with some white mottling. Head of bird was striking .. coloration at first glance almost like a white pigeon. I watched for 5-10 minutes before it flew. It flew with a large flock of 30-40 robins. Hundreds of robins foraging in the leaf litter or overhead in the canopy.

South service road crossing culvert 10 meters east of the extension cord from the blower building there were three ducks dead and left in the weeds. One female mallard with no head, one smaller wood duck, and one other mallard(?). All were not stiff.. and not eaten by predators.

Observed one squirrel dash up a large cottonwood.. and two or more deer escaping north into the Woods just north of the new trash station.

The path along the south border trail looks to have been cleared and swept clean of leaves in a path about a meter wide. The earlier human soiling was largely gone.. at least the most evident. Still some of that left on top of the Dune trail off to side.

Cold Opossum

Four nice walks in the New Year.
I returned from the tropics of Belize and went for a sunset walk on the 13th with temperature diving to 11 F.. near a low for this winter.
I saw and heard no deer, no dogs.
The Woods were very dry. The leaf litter of October/November still unconsolidated, crisp, light chaff. No water in the Wash at the Elm Bridge.

On the 14th with temperature in the low twenties I took a longer afternoon walk on all the trails. Very little blow down or branches to clear. Fewer than ten small branches down on the trail cut by twig girdlers. Previous years there have been scores of these with the distinctive ring incision the cerambycid longhorn beetles make before laying their eggs. Small amount of gossamer across the E-W Fence Line Trail probably from activity on warmer days a week earlier.
Much of the new winter green ground cover forbs like Stellaria chickweed were looking poor, browned up around the edges of the new small leaves from cold and/or drought.

There was a recently dead young opossum at the eastern end of the Ravine trail, perhaps dead from the sub 15 F cold of the past few days, or more likely perhaps, a predator or dog moving through. The pelage was barely mussed with few tufts of hair nearby.

The Western Pond was mostly (85%) open water. The Eastern Pond was 75% frozen over.

There was still a pool of water in the Western Wash between Highway 9 and the Pipeline.
Robins and cardinals in the Woods. No deer, no dogs.

Another late walk on the 16th.. much warmer.. nearly 60F. Late just past sunset I saw one deer navigating south into thick concealing brush on the west end of the sand dune. I heard one owl near the Grandfather cottonwood at twilight.

Then the 21st, a pleasant afternoon walk with new geography faculty member, Kirsten de Beurs. We discussed a possible phenology class and maybe a phenology cam from the south (blower building) recording the Woods. We discussed possibly using 30m satellite data to register when and where Woods have been flooded back to 1980(?) and possibly having Geography students map more precisely the location of Carpenter's steel post 200 foot grid.. perhaps more big trees too.

No deer or dogs. Few birds. No branches down from light (.02 inch) freezing rain & snow on the 20th. Armadillos have been heavily foraging the trails and southern area turning over the upper soil and leaves in winding foraging bouts.