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.