Dogs again

5 pm walking in the snow along the SW trail a German shepherd sized dog came trotting across the trail from the south heading into the Woods.. female, black back, white chest. I ran at her. She turned, barked and a German shepherd with her ran back from the Woods. No collars on either. They had been running rabbits, and small game. I followed both by their tracks in the snow. They left the Woods via a gap in the fence just east of the trash station, then trotted east across the lawn to the dense willows and brush in the ditch extending south along the side of the waste treatment plant. Good cover and route south towards woods to the south. Not easy to follow.  I rang and left message with Animal Control .. but they have done nothing with previous reports of dogs in the Woods.. not an effective agency.

Startling Death

Making my way south across the West Dune trail I was startled to come upon a white-tailed yearling, newly dead, lying along the trail. Some light snow had drifted upon the muzzle, upper legs and parts of the back. Its black eyes were open. The right flank had a 5 inch diameter circular patch of skin exposed - no protecting hair; but the skin was not broken. Night & early morning Dec 26 the temperature fell to 13 F.. a young animal, perhaps not in good enough condition to survive the cold night. It did not seem malnourished. It is still early winter.

A quarter hour earlier I was startled by the near barking of a dog in the Woods. I saw a German shepherd mix dog (no collar) and ran after it shouting. It ran to just southeast of the Grandfather cottonwood then ducked away on a low game trail under briars southward where I could not follow.

The snow began Christmas morning before dawn.. freezing rain at first at 3 am, changing to snow by mid morning..  2-3 inches.

I came out today, the 27th to see what I would find in the Woods. I began at the NW entrance at 4:15.
Snow is like the dust detectives use to find fingerprints. It produces a visual record of all the use of every trail. Inhabited burrows of small animals, mice, cotton rats, squirrels and rabbits are revealed. Tracks of raccoon and skunk and opossum and/ or armadillo were common along the northwest trails. East of the NW pond, the tracks of dogs were common and dominant using the trails. Must have been a pack of them.

I trekked along most of the trails of the Woods. Some sections were heavily trafficked and others were untouched. It would be interesting to sample the Woods at 15 or 25 m intervals with a camera, including the marked posts for reference locations, to record sections that were heavily used. The West Dune trail seemed like the heaviest use. Most wildlife crossing the dense thicket of greenbriar used the narrow cleared path there.

Returning to the NW via the West Trail I was startled again to flush a barred owl from its perch above the trail just south of the junction of Andrea Drive with Chautauqua. The Woods are still wild.

Dry and Full of Light

The Woods today are light and clear. All deciduous leaves are down, leaving Ligustrum privet, and Euonymus evergreens more noticeable. I walked in via the North Gate with no mission in mind other than to observe and enjoy. Cold, high 30's at first; but then rapidly warmed to low 50's. The Vespula wasps were out foraging from their ground nest. I saw a couple green bottle calliphorid flies and a pentatomid bug out wandering around. A cluster of a dozen small flies.. chironomids? were flying low over the SW corner of the West Pond. I've seen this before weeks or months ago.. small flying insects- like chironomids - flying over the same 3-4 square meter area. One or two deer I spotted 3 times in different parts of the Woods.. a rabbit dashing, a few squirrels, someone had plucked and eaten a robin or two near the east end of the East West Trail.. left two piles of feathers by the big pecan snag. I saw the big pileated woodpecker fly from the pecans at the base of the Ravine Trail near the East Pond. The southeast corner had leaves of violets. They looked dry and stressed.

Blustery Chill

Strong 20-40 mph winds all night last night and 30-40 degree F drop in temp. I went to the Woods early at 7:30 and walked many of the Trails (SW - NE and return) to see what had changed. A few trees down.. broken out tops from trees dead this summer. I was able to drag and clear each from the trail. Couple of deer south of the East Pond and three dozen robins at the East Pond having a drink. The water in the Wash above the Elm Bridge has dried to the bottom of the post.. one small pool a few gallons 25 feet north..

Immortal Vespula?

Dec 10, 11, 12 overnight lows were 19, 18 and 21 F. Today a week later at 5 PM as the sun was disappearing I counted 11 yellowjackets flying into their ground nest in 60 seconds. Amazing. They should have all been dead a month ago. There should not be insects out for these wasps to feed upon.. maybe they are going to get water? I entered via the new North Gate - lots of poison ivy sprouts there to keep trimmed down. I yellow-flagged a trail from SW Trail post #5 northeast to the Big Trees by the East Pond, a route through dense young green ash and patches of willow.  Just one deer spotted but robins (by the score) and starlings were gathered in the Woods in raucous crowds. They suddenly fell quiet around 4:45. Claire appeared hiking out with her traps.

Evening's Infinite Form

Out in the Woods today mid afternoon I made a new entrance trail to the North Central Woods. It probably won't be used much by folks other than me.. but it will be useful to access the eastern North Rim area and a view over the Woods in winter. I returned to the Woods at 5:15 and wandered in the SW gate with the sun setting. In winter the din of the traffic carries through the leafless trees and seems to fill the perimeter Woods .. too much. I retreated up the SW trail into the dense green ash and the lost elm.. nearer to the heart of the Woods.. quieter there.

With the light growing dim I looked up at the twilight sky and was struck by the silhouetted form of the trees around. Bent and curving elm with tangled masses of vines towards its crown, stout vertical hackberry and green ash. Each direction I looked against the sky there was a new picture puzzle mosaic of black silhouetted forms against the silver white twilight. You can see trees so much better at twilight.
In Oliver's Woods, mere 70 acres there is an infinity of form of tree canopy architecture.. all shaped by an unknown combination of genetic fixed characteristics - a species intrinsic form; and experiences of the tree as it grows.. competition for light, damage from ice, reaching for open space.. each species in its own different way. Marvelous to see and contemplate.

Leaving the Woods at 6 there was only the bright rim of sunset color in the west. The larger bur oak and other trees were darker, sharper, clearer - black against the last light in the sunset. I am sure if  I saw this view of the Woods more often I would see and discover more. I would know the Woods in a way that few do now.

Light Rain and Lots of Robins

It has been a dry dry fall, but Friday night the 14th (OU Graduation) we had a little rain (0.16 inches). That shower was enough to freshen the Woods. The soil there had become very dry.  I checked the NW pond and it continues to 'fill' from the water table, now 50% of regular full surface is submerged.. to a depth of about 0.3 feet. The East pond has several gallons of water gathered around the post but not up to the zero point yet. The Wash is ponded up above the Elm Bridge to 16 inches depth. Lots of flotsam and jetsam the usual styrofoam cups etc.  Soft mud along the wash is filled with tracks of deer and other animals.

I carried another 13 heavy stones to the Woods.. now up to 80 .. need another 70 approx. to provide a path when the floods submerge the West Trail 150 m between posts WT#2 and WT#5.

Saturday the 15th, robins were flocking up around the ponds and through the Woods. I took the swing blade to clear some of the overgrowth along the Ravine Trail. Largish snag fall the 14th with accompanying tangle of briars, vines etc. blocking trail will need saw to clear. More to do there on the east end but good progress. Just a little trail side clearing in winter will probably help keep trails from becoming overgrown with honeysuckle and coralberry in summer.. and it is a lot easier in the winter.

I've decided to bypass/ eliminate the short steep downslope dip on the Ravine Trail and bust through a short level distance across the top to connect east to west. It is pretty dense with vegetation and blow down. I've also decided to give a go to creating the path to the north central fence line from the western portion of the N Rim trail. I will start resetting my beetle traps along the north fence line and that will be a good entry to the Woods.

Today I was thinking about the Woods as a canary in the coal mine peri-urban natural forest. By watching Oliver's Woods closely and being familiar with it, we can see changes and detect invasions as they occur. The tiger salamander populations that were once abundant there are now missing..  either the result of roads closing off the migratory paths out of the Woods, or change in habitat from more open grazed pasture to dense green ash growth. The understory in the Woods in places is now dominated by Lonicera honeysuckle with substantial stands of Ligustrum privet and increasing multiflora rose. Eleagnus Russian olive is more scarce. The new invader amur honeysuckle, Lonicera mackii I think I will start to eliminate this spring when it shows up in flower.. probably forty or so of these in the Woods now.. and perhaps the greatest threat to the Woods' current open understory.

Suddenly Winter and Persimmons

After remarking how winter was so warm - one week ago 3 Dec. high was nearly 80 and low was 67F; suddenly one week later, the temperature has taken a nose dive.. down to 19 last night... same tonight.. daytime highs in the low 30's. I went to the Woods SW entrance at 4:00 to see how they were weathering the sharp change.

About 30 m. in from the gate the trail passes through a group of seven or eight tall persimmons - each with their distinctive gray black pebbly bark. I noticed an orange mushy persimmon on the ground and looking up I saw there were still dozens left on the tree.. so I shook and swayed the tree until a couple more persimmons plummeted to earth. I picked them up and had a bite of each. No bitterness left, just mushy, sweet bland fruit pudding and big brown seeds.. a good dispersal package.

While I stood there two deer trotted off in separate directions. Birds were quiet.. not much stirring. It was cold. I walked on and looped through the Woods enjoying going off trail from the Big Trees back to the West Trail. That area is so thick with fallen green ash stems. I wonder what it will look like a few years from now.. if the majority of down stems will have decomposed. Now with all the leaves down is the best time to find new things.. The thick covering of new fallen leaves there are still crunchy dry.

Returning along the West Trail I counted the stepping stones: 40 in the northern pile, 7 and 8 along the trail south of the sedges, 13 by the old wooden post close to the fence.. 68 total. I could use another 30 along the southern portion before the rains come.

Fire and Fog

Thursday 5 December at 2 pm there was a great billowing cloud of black smoke rising from the SE corner of Oliver's Woods:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGkzp-0zlgA
Work at the Treatment Plant ignited a fire in some big plastic filters. A fierce brief fire with toxic black smoke consumed a small corner of three hackberry trees, an elm, redbud and head high old ragweed and sunflowers. The heat was great enough to ignite the upper branches of two old bur oak snags a hundred feet away. Everything was quickly extinguished when the Fire Department arrived. Another interesting disturbance to contemplate.. interesting to watch recovery with spring rains. What will be the first green on the hillside where heat was so great?

Last few days have been foggy or low overcast all day with temps in the mid forties day and night. Remarkably the Vespula ground wasp nest is still active. At 10 am this morning there was a regular stream of foragers landing and entering.. appeared undiminished from warmer days two weeks past.

Walking the southern and eastern Woods this morning I saw no deer, only a handful of squirrels. There has been considerable foraging going on along the white trail. The Woods are quite dry but also shut down for winter (all the leaves been down for a few weeks now).

Butterflies and Veg Plots in December

Saturday was warm 77 F. I brought a dozen more heavy stones for the West Trail, although with the continuing drought, the Woods, trails, sedges and cattails are all dry. There is some water in the NW pond. It continues to slowly increase, with no new rain. It must be water table flow from our one late September good rain. It is only a few inches in depth but a libellulid dragonfly was ovipositing there at noon.
I re-discovered E.L. Rice's 1966 one-acre plot just east of the West Trail. Eight or nine of his thin rebar posts marking the lines and corners are still there, 46 years later. With measuring tapes I flagged the boundary line of the old plot and reset the missing NE corner. Unpublished 1966 student term papers with analyses of the plot describe a very different forest filled with thousands of small green ash trees after the removal of Fred Oliver's livestock five years previously in 1961. Now the stand has sections of dense green ash trees 20 feet high each a little thicker than my wrist. Many of these trees (30-40%?)  are dead and can be easily pushed over. The swollen aerenchyma and adventitious roots above the soil are evidence of the ankle-deep, weeks-long flooding that drowned their roots. Other sections of the old plot are open, a few large 30-60 cm diameter, mature canopy trees, and almost no other trees.
I spent two hours of the afternoon with Callie and Daniel walking the trails and talking about projects. On the SW Trail we were approached by two white-tailed deer, a youngish doe and her younger yearling. They came on surprisingly close to us before before turning and running tangentially away. Seconds later we saw why - a pack of three dogs chasing them from the east. I took off running at the dogs, yelling and they ran away.. but deeper into the Woods. Not good. Up on the Tree Loop we had earlier encountered a large robust burrow recently dug out that had me wondering if a coyote had dug a den. Now I am sure it was the dogs digging up the home burrow of gophers or some other family group of ground dwellers. I'll have to see if I can get the dogs out of the Woods.
The warmth of the day had butterflies out flying, a red admiral, a checkered white Pontia and other brush-footed butterflies; a honey bee, a Polistes wasp and miscellaneous other insects. Odd to think that all this insect diversity is out there sleeping in diapause in the Woods, ready to be awakened on a warm day in winter; then go back to sleep through months of cold, before the spring.

Opossum Late November

After a week of mid November warm weather (75F), the temperature took a sharp drop the evening of Thanksgiving. The leaves are now mostly all down. The Grandfather cottonwood was one of the last. Yesterday it stood surrounded by a  golden yellow pool of its own leaves on the forest floor. The long mild - warm late season weather makes me wonder if plants that drop their leaves with summer heat stress and then reflush a new crop in October could now find a winning strategy. I noticed a young bur oak with fresh new leaves east of the Grandfather cottonwood.
Remarkably, the Vespula yellowjacket nest I've been watching is still pretty active. I counted 38 workers landing at the entrance in one minute. There are also some mosquitoes out.. maybe the yellowjackets can help keep their number down until real cold comes.
It is hunting season and I've seen more deer in the Woods: a group of three.. not very skittish and a group of four .. more escape artists. This evening at the end of the day I encountered an opossum on the  Northern Loop trail. In the dim light it chose to not move until I got about 15 feet away, then trundled down into the dry wash and could not navigate the steep far bank.. so again did not move as I walked within 6 feet and took a few pictures.
Last two mornings a murder of crows has been mobbing first a barred owl and then a hapless young hawk. Both had tried to rest in the dense canopy west of the the odd pit and mound topography along the West Dune trail. The crows were relentless and hilarious. I would run or fly away if they took after me.
I finished yellow GPS tags on the 6 posts for the West Trail and the 6 posts for the Two Friends, Big Log & West Dune trails. Just need to do the six posts of the Northern Rim trail to complete the post project. The OU stone yard has now provided 60 + heavy cut stones I have moved to 2-3 stacks along the West Trail, waiting for the trail to flood inch deep so I can place the stones where needed to create a stepping path through the wet section.

Wet Woods and Snail Seed

The rains returned last night after a dry fall and many weeks of waiting.  Mesonet says 0.94 inches, just .03 less than the precip in my backyard. It began quietly at 2 am and then good heavy thunderstorm rain intermittent between 3 and 7 am. I parked at the NW Gate at 9:45 and walked in to see what the storm had changed. Beautiful Woods with 90% of the canopy leaves suddenly down.. bright yellows, brown and red. Last week 80% of canopy leaves were still up. The West Pond had hundreds of liters of light mocha brown turbid water.. up to the 2 inch mark on the post. (Oddly, a few bathtubs' worth of water appeared yesterday in the West Pond before the rain, after weeks of being completely dry.. not sure why water would be seeping up in the middle after no rain.) The East Pond is still empty. The West Wash was filled up to 36 inches deep at the post and flowing out across the Woods below the Elm Bridge.. just touching the bottom of the bridge. At the Beaver Dam, water was flowing well westward up to the SW 8 post. The Ragweed Delta was flooded with water flowing in on the east side and building westward.

I found 9 new Coprinus inky caps pushing their way up through the leaves fifty feet NNW  from the Beaver Dam.. and one beginning deliquescence SW of the post in the West Wash.
The Vespula yellowjackets were surprisingly busy, foraging in and out from their ground burrow. I watched through binoculars 3-4 meters away as an opilone daddy long legs walked and blundered within 2-3 inches of the entrance. I saw a wasp slowly descend towards the opilone and both disappeared then into the fallen leaves.
There were at least four whitetailed deer that scattered and bounded away south from the Northern Loop area east of the pond.. including one young buck with nice antlers.
Many more squirrels than I normally see, 8 or 9 foraging. Several crows were raucously calling overhead and mixed flocks of passerines, chickadees, sparrows, miscellaneous others were busy in the big trees east of the Elm Bridge. They all probably sense the cold is coming.
Here and there through the Woods, bright red clusters of color stand out, the berries of Cocculus snail seed.

Something hidden, go and find it.

This afternoon was beautiful in the Woods.. one of the nicest times of the year.
I walked in through the NE Gate at 1:40 and decided to just wander. Off the trail and ready to find new things. Ticks and chiggers are gone. Understory brush leaves are 80 % gone.. great time to explore.
 Just north of the beaver dam I found a cluster of a half dozen fresh, perfect white edible puffballs.   I broke one open, and inhaled; smelling the good fungus odor. I also found one edible Coprinus inky cap just coming up .. a shaggy mane.
Thirty yards (meters) northwest of the beaver dam I was delighted to find one of the Charles Carpenter stakes. One inch diameter and five feet long, these were placed on a 500 foot grid back 60 years ago and are still there. I can't read the label post number any more but it is in a position to be about F7. I bet maybe a dozen or so of these remain in place waiting to be found. Stake and mushrooms!
Near the stake (~ 30 feet E) I found the first nest of Vespula 'yellowjacket' ground wasps I've seen in the Woods.  Active foragers - several per minute were coming and going from the nest entry. I expect they will all be dead and their new queens dispersed within a month. These were common in the southeastern US but I almost never see in Oklahoma.  Some vertebrate forager had dug up (or knocked down) near Tall Stump, the nest of a 'paper wasp' either Polistes from a perch up high, or Vespula from a ground nest, and left the corrugated looking nest comb after eating the grubs.  In the sedges of the western woods, several large long legged tipulid craneflies flew slowly to new perches.
One other new find for the Woods, a Maclura Osage-orange Bois d'arc by the NW camera tree. It was surrounded by 150-180 green big 'oranges' on the ground. I also found numerous untagged large diameter trees. Time to get going with mapping more of the biggest trees. A pair of flickers (or pileated?) by the camera tree.. and at 4 I heard one barred owl calling from the south.
With the long summer dry I was able to walk into the cattail swamp and find it completely dry. I dug handfuls of old dried snail shells for identification (Helisoma, Physa, Sphaeriids) .. then wandered south and eventually east to return to the NE Gate. Horace Kephart wrote about the  eastern mountains.. "something hidden, go and find it".. and today that is what I did.

Cold Wind, Clear Light

One o'clock Friday I went to the NW Trail entrance to see what the winds of the past two days had done to the Woods. The daytime highs had abruptly dropped from low 80's F to high 40's with a stout N wind accompanying the change. The West Pond and East Pond remain dry, although there are pools of water in the wash with the post there in 1 inch of water. More leaves have shaken loose. Large green & yellow heart shaped catalpa leaves are down, along with some of the smaller golden cottonwood leaves. Most of the cottonwood leaves are still up.. as are the leaves of most other species.. a bit remarkable for late October.. with the wind. Maybe the tough summer has trees holding their leaves longer. The hot mid October days have not provided the weather needed to form abscission layers.
I wondered if the predictable sequence of different species dropping their leaves.. if that sequence repeated annually with enough regularity that fungi and litter micro-arthropods would have an established succession, tracking the different species of leaves being added to their available resources.
At Jct of EW Trail and S end of Creek Trail there are two of our largest soapberry trees (marked with blue tape now). Sitting at the S end of the SE Trail, I wondered how many different galleries of wood borers I could find in the Woods. The young leaves of violets are up in the southeast quarter, and Stellaria chickweed, Glechoma Gill over the ground and a mix of other herbaceous species.. a pretty good coverage of green succulent leaves there for foraging snails, rabbits, and other herbivores.
The crossing by the old rusted tank held the tracks of raccoon and deer. Marvelous two hours in the Woods. I should come back on Saturday. I walked 2 miles or more.. most of the trails; cleared the small branches that had fallen and refreshed blue blazes, where that was needed. The Ravine Trail needs a bit more clearing but all the others are in pretty good shape.

Old leaves and tools

Brief break from reading and office work, to go the Woods. I took my old swing blade, thinking I could clear the trail through the knee high Polygonum knot weed west of dragonfly corner.
Through the SW Gate, under the closed canopy of  the big trees, leaf fall has begun to pick up. Now the yellow rounded leaves of the green ash are beginning to join the early elm leaves on the forest floor. No great leaf fall yet. The canopy is still largely there, green but getting old.

The swing blade worked well for the task and was less annoying than loud finicky weed whips. Something natural about the cutting swish-swish of the blade, echoes centuries use of a scyth.

The Woods were quiet. Two whitetailed deer down by the dam. It was surprisingly warm.. mid low 80's.
The Woods are dry. They've had a few autumn rains but are waiting for a good long autumn drench and a deep drink before winter comes.

Friday I visited the NE tree loop with Bruce and got a lot of new trees. Added soapberries, cottonwood, green ash, beautyberry and others to the list, with some good examples. I returned on Saturday and carefully flagged all the new trees joining the tutorial list.. and noted the 15-20 trees that had died of the original 95. Walnuts and some of the others that had been stressed and defoliated by this second consecutive hot, dry summer.. were reflushing fresh green leaves in their crowns and along their stems. Some of these trees will likely not survive through 2013.. but there are good young recruits in the understory and enough to keep the tutorial trail well filled.

Tree Loop survivors of summer 2012

Quick afternoon walk around NE Tree Loop.. first time all the way around in a few months. I checked all the numbered trees and assigned health values 1-3 good to bad to x = dead. We have lost a lot of pecans.. all but one of original half dozen numbered. Also we lost two walnuts with most of the remaining five looking bad. 81 trees remain alive of the original 95 numbered (including shrubs).

The trail was in reasonable shape one broken over hackberry needs cutting around tree 80.

I should build the trail's numbered identified trees back up to 95 and go to 100.. and hope summers are better.

Dung beetles and dayflowers

Quick trip to the Woods via the NE Gate this afternoon. I took the saw to clear three blow downs across the EW Trail, the 2 Pecan Trail, and the NW Trail. On the Tree Loop by tree #16 I found 2+ Canthon dung beetles in a fresh-dug array of six beetle sized holes in the soft earth damped by the < half inch rain over night. The one beetle I harassed with a straw did a peculiar bulldozer movement shoving aside soft dug soil and escaping into one of the pre-dug holes. No poop evident. Coming out of the Woods and crossing Isld Crossing later I found lots of Commelina Dayflower, bright blue. The wash is ponded up with water by Elm Bridge but empty in upper stretch below Isld Crossing.

Golden elm leaves, dark forest floor

Storm coming, I went to the Woods at 2:30, the SW gate. The forest was humid, warm, and heavy, mid 70's, a restless wind, thunder rumbling in the distance; low pressure gave the air tension before the storm. All across the darkened forest floor new golden elm leaves glowed in the subdued light. The forest canopy is largely intact.. and mostly green; tattered, senescent, but still there. The first yellow leaves were brought down in this morning's brief storms with 16/100ths inch of rain. Across the Woods, life was mostly still. Two medium sized brown geometrid moths flew as I walked by. I saw one Scincella lateralis ground skink slithering away quickly over the newly damp leaves by the grandfather cottonwood. Crows overhead repeated their alarm calls and small flocks of a half dozen robins flew ahead of me walking along the Northern Loop. Two whitetailed deer skittishly disappeared west downhill from the west side of the Tree Loop as I approached. No turtles today. Maybe later after the storm.
At the Elm Bridge water was flowing in the West Wash; 28 inches deep by the post; up towards the crossing log but not to it. Below Elm Bridge the water flowed out of its main course and spread west.. but none flowed up to the Beaver Dam. No water in the East or West Pond.
Up on high ground, the west side of the Tree Loop, the whole forest floor and on top of the Dune along the Dune trail, the ground is now covered in bright fresh green, first two leaves of something like Stellaria chickweed... too early to identify.. it is almost lush but an inch high or less. Cnidoscolus bull nettle is also on top of the Dune trail. I cut it back and discourage but it persists with new fresh growth. On top of the Dune trail there is also abundant Eupatorium white boneset in flower. Along the Northern Loop immediately south of NL #4 there is a bright red fist-size cluster of Cocculus moonseed berries in tangled vines at the base of a large hackberry. More Cocculus berries bright red woven in with wild grape vines on the fence extending south of the SW Gate.
By the large down pecan log cut through on the E-W Trail there is now a blockage of old tumbled down vines and a medium size log to clear. To the west, an abundant two square meter patch of small Merasmius-like parasol mushrooms are new and growing by EW #2.

New Paint

5:30 PM Wednesday evening 10/10 I hiked in on the NW Trail to refresh paint blazes. NW trail to the N. Loop jct; then N. Loop to Isd Crossing and south back to the east end of the NW trail; then west back to Hackberry Alley; south to Tall Stump; west on the EW Trail to the SW Trail and back out along the W Trail to the NW entrance again by 7 PM. The Woods were still, as if waiting for a storm. Very little evidence of animals stirring. No deer, no turtles. One more medium large tree down across the NW Trail east of jct Hackberry Alley. The trail had lots of smallish branches down across the trail, as though lots of partial canopy die back from summer 2011 or summer 2012 was coming down in small bits. Not much of anything in flower along my route.. lots of light-brown, dried ash seeds newly down. Luxuriant growth of Polygonum knotweed along the trail where elms had recently died and opened up the canopy, by Grandfather Cottonwood and at Butterfly Corner. These patches were beginning to thin. Heather M's plant ecology and other botany classes have been using the Woods - very good news. Heather's thought about water quality in the wash and if toxic to trees is a good one.

Sudden Autumn

First frost was here this morning. After a long, seemingly interminable, series of September weeks with daytime highs in the mid 90's, the night time lows zoomed sharply downward to 31F.
After lecture today and office work this morning I decided to go to the Woods at noon with a saw. I entered via the NW trail. By the NW#3 post I encountered a large hackberry top broken out of a dead snag and tumbled into the trail with a tangle of vines. There were lots of galleries of wood borers - mainly cerambycids all across the bark. Not too sure when the beetles were there.. recent couple years or previous. Nice 'interference zones' of fungi in the saw cut cross section of the big logs.

It took a while, but I was able to clear the original path.
The good rains of late September still left the NW pond empty.

I drove around to the NE entrance and hiked in, to the east end of the N Rim trail, where another large snag had fallen into the trail. No vines. I cleared it. On the way there, a 3 toed box turtle was strolling along the trail 20 feet east of Isld. Crossing. I saw just one deer.. SW of Isld. Crossing.

The Woods are looking much more open now. Much of the lush understory herbs growing in June are greatly reduced or disappeared. No significant autumn leaf drop from the canopy yet. The common trailside Elephantopus have all produced spiky green seed heads.

Turtle and Rains Return

After a recent record 70 consecutive days without > 0.1 inch precip, the rains returned Thursday Aug 16 with a good 0.48 inch freshet (my backyard) or 0.26 (Norman Mesonet). I went walking with Lara on the 17th at 8 AM from the NW Ponds entrance. Spotted two whitetailed deer. The Western Wash was filled with water to 18 inch depth at the post above the Elm Bridge. The ponds were both empty but life was returning.

We walked 70% of the Woods' trails. We met Cassie downloading data from Heather M.'s trees and talked about bark characters distinguishing American elm (brown and gold or cream sandwich alternation of color in cross section) from slippery elm (just brown or red brown).

I returned with a saw and cut away 2-3 largish fallen trees blocking the Northern Loop trail and the SE and SCentral trails. 'World class' chiggers afterwards >100 bites.

The large yellow acridid Melanoplus differentialis grasshoppers on the south boundary road in the 2-3 m tall ragweed were abundant.

More rain 1.50 inches (my backyard) 1.14 (Mesonet) Friday 18 August pushed the depth in the Western Wash to 34 inches, just below the bottom of the Elm Bridge log. Soil 2-3 inches down was still dry, almost powdery. It had become hydrophobic through long baking.

Today Saturday the 25th I walked in the SW Gate along the South Boundary Trail and up to and along the West trail. Need to bring in stepping stones for section that will be wet.. and blue blaze trail trees on the West Trail.
Also walked in the NE entrance down to Elm Bridge and out to Fence Corner. The Western Wash was empty.. lots of deer tracks deep in the soft bottom. Along the EW Trail just west of the fallen pecan log there was a three toed box turtle. I clipped branches along the way.

At the end of things

Interesting time in the Woods right now. We are near the end of things. Change, a transition is coming. Sixty six days without rain.. Norman has the longest driest stretch of any of the 110 Mesonet stations in the 77 OK counties. Russell and I went to the Woods via the NE gate this afternoon at 6 to lash a length of elm across the Elm Bridge as a hand rail. Along the entry trail, the green Elephantopus elephantsfoot and Symphoricarpos coralberry were wilted. The Chasmanthium fish-on-a-line grass and others are dry cured bleached by the sun. Two white-tailed deer were there along the tree trail. They ran off to the NE. Everything else is waiting. Snails, pill bugs, fungi, millipedes, ants, beetles. Life has stopped growing or moving and now is waiting, enduring, waiting for rains of autumn and the end of the season of drought and heat. The great heat and drought of summer have been too much for some. Stressed by last summer, they have died this summer.

My guess is we will have significant rains in the next 1-2 weeks. Day lengths will begin to shorten noticeably now two months past the solstice. Days with temperature over 110F will end. We will not see many more days over 100F this year. I nailed a 6 foot metal ruler as a water depth guage to the 4x4 post I had placed earlier in the deepest portion of the Wash above the Elm Bridge (now dry). The Woods are ready for the rain to come again.

Very Hot Days and Shelter in the Woods

Last several days Norman high temperatures have been breaking 110F or 43C.. OKC hit all time high of 113F. We've been above 100F every day since July 18 with no rain in 60 days. Wildfires scattered about state including east Norman. This Sunday morning it is cooler (80F at 8 AM) and I went to the NE Gate to see how the Woods were doing.

The west side trail of the Tree Loop smelled a bit like early fall leaves.. the rich tannin smell from some of the early leaf drop. It also smelled like mammals. I think the whitetailed deer were there minutes before my arrival.

On the tree loop there have been some more tree deaths: small American elm (#5) at the gate is dead. A young pecan at its base will take its place. Middle aged pecans are generally not doing well. Many had dead crowns from summer 2011 but had sprouted lateral buds along the trunk and produced adventitious leaves. Some of these higher sprouts are wilting, dying, graying up.. other lower stem leaves are still healthy and green. The Texas hickories Carya texana near the gate are doing noticeably well. The big walnut #171 at top of Pipeline Trail.. nearly dead last year and this spring.. has good survival of its stem leaves.
Around the loop Mora mulberry leaves were beginning to turn golden for an early fall. With a soft breeze, small skiffs of leaves were falling in the woods. Ampelopsis grape vines were shedding some leaves, mulberry, some elm and hackberry.. early leaf drop only. The drought and heat was enough so that leaves of invasive Ligustrum privet, Eleagnus Russian olive and Lonicera Amur honeysuckle were all wilted. #90 Cercis redbud is dead.

Down by the Elm Bridge, the deeper Woods with taller older trees, closer to their water table - there was a sweet subtle fragrance. I did not see what was blooming. The Woods there with its greater mass and development, provided some shelter and a partial buffer against the extremes of heat and drought. Tibicen Dog day Cicadas were droning loudly by NS Fence corner. On the NS trail a talisman, a single black and white Plectrodera elytra. I found a hawk feather, a crow feather and down by the beaver dam several vulture feathers..but the vultures had moved from their customary roost, to perch on the power poles beyond the new compost facility.

Along the Main SW trail the large discrete patches of Polygonum surround dying or dead trees (mostly elms) where there is new light through the canopy.
In the SW Corner the Agelenid funnel web weaving spiders have returned in abundance. Interesting that they should be there and not as abundant elsewhere in the Woods. The life here feels like it can tap deeper sources of moisture.. either from deeper roots.. more recently, fully flooded ground (months ago) or new conk fungi growing with moisture still held in large decaying host logs.

Two white tailed deer.. one west of beaver dam and one NW of the East Pond.. looked kind of scruffy. I am sure the heat is difficult for them.
At Island Crossing one small young Scincella lateralis skink writhed and skooted across the soil to shelter. One Cornus dogwood dying on the way back.

The life in the Woods is still in better shape than unprotected trees, plants and animals living out in the open. No ticks detected so far; but about 30 chigger bites.

Hot Dry Woods

Out early this Friday morning at 7:30 to dig in water measuring post above the Elm Bridge. Natural deep pool 60 feet above the bridge is usually one of the last areas to hold water in the Wash.. a good spot to monitor changing water depth, flow, availability. It is dry now - good time to get the post in place. The West Pond is also dry. The East Pond is dry, with some moist soil remaining near the post. Today Norman has gone 50 days with less than 1/10th inch of rain.. driest in the state of OK tied with only Watonga. Forecast highs for the next ten days are stuck at 106 F.

While I was digging in the post, Anthony and Pradeep came by.. setting up trees to hold phenology camera. Anthony has cleared some small trees near tree 123 the second largest cottonwood, to facilitate camera placement in tall pecan #120(?).

It is too hot and dry even for the ticks. I collected only one on my ankle.
The heat and drought is opening some of the trails. The Lonicera, Symphoricarpos and other trailside vegetation are withering. I found one older whitetailed doe at the NW Pond's entrance. She gave me a white tail flag but then walked only slowly away. The air where she stood smelled strongly of a mammal.

We were startled passing a large broken pecan trunk east of Tall Stump when it collapsed and loudly crashed down a short distance into a juniper. Trees do come down in still air.. a couple years hanging for this broken bole.

Large Catocala underwing moths are on trunks of pecans in the Woods.

Cicadas, Katydids and Mid Summer Return to the Woods

After a month away, I entered the SW Gate at 4:30 to find what might be new in the Woods. A hundred feet north of me a whitetailed deer (2-3 year old?) moved north and east deeper into the trees.

It was an odd day. The mid morning was a hot 90 F. By 4 PM it had fallen to 74 F.. only to rise again to 85 by 7:30. The Woods have seen 18 consecutive days over 90F and 33 consecutive days with less than a 0.1 inch of rain. The E Pond was dry except for a few liters of muddy water pooled around the post. (The W Pond was 0.3 feet in depth with a few hundred liters of water left). There were dry cracks fragmenting the soil along the Main SW trail (good refugia for moisture loving biota?) But the Woods were filled with rich humidity from the light 0.01 inch rain shower at lunch.

Polygonum Lady's thumb is growing in healthy thick swards along the SW trail. The green patches are two feet tall and tightly defined by abrupt borders with open ground, leaving me curious as to what so sharply limits their prolific growth.. light? - need to check the borders of the patches with a densitometer or light meter. Along the trail, persimmon saplings are noticeably the most persistent re-sprouters from previous clipping.

By the leaning Ash tree, the Woods were filled with the continuous trill of snowy tree crickets, punctuated with various bird calls. A few cicadas were singing "ziz ziz ziz owww". I found a couple of exuviae clinging to leaves of Virginia creeper growing upon the large old walnut along the fence line just east of the junction with the Ravine Trail. I wonder if walnut's penchant for poisoning the soil would affect or deter cicadas.

A mating pair of big asilid robber flies remained coupled and flew two or three times to escape me as I walked towards the W Pond. They seemed stuck together as though even voluntary emergency separation might take a few minutes.

Along the muddy SW side of the E Pond there are 4 or 5 crayfish 'castles' or mounds, holes ranging in diameter from 1.5 inch, big enough for a golf ball, to about .75 inch large enough for an average hot dog.. with walls of small rolled balls of mud/soil the size of moth balls. These have intrigued me since my youth 50 years ago.

http://chestofbooks.com/crafts/scientific-american/sup3/Habits-Of-Burrowing-Crayfishes-In-The-United-States.html

Along the trail just north of the second largest cottonwood a quick Scincella lateralis brown skink scurried away into the Symphoricarpos buckbrush. (There is a small patch of poison ivy there to watch and eliminate near a large ascending vine.)

There are not many spider webs in the Woods now.. I found two Micrathena webs across the trails. There were few mosquitoes.. only a couple near the pool at Island Crossing.

Standing at Island Crossing at 6:05 the cicadas were suddenly quite loud.. along with the katydids chorusing. It was as if they were competing. I wondered if having both species stridulating loudly in the same location makes it harder for mates to find each other.. do the species 'sing' louder or differently when they are present together? I have imagined that a sharp sound from me, for example breaking a stick, will sometimes cause cicadas to suddenly momentarily grow quieter. I should test this. There is a large emergence of cicadas in the NE Woods now.

At the base of the northern ridge, east end of the N Rim trail two young whitetail deer sprinted away.. one (spotted?) fawn and one yearling (?) heading opposite directions along the base of the ridge. I have not seen the older, more approachable doe and am wondering if she survived the last hunting season.

At Elm Bridge, abundant water was backed up to Bur Oak Bridge but not flowing. It would be interesting to mark some of the flotsam collected there and try to recover it later to measure its movement.
West of the bridge a brown rabbit hopped away south of the big cut pecan log.

Along the Tree Loop, formerly 'dead' trees continue to live with thriving small clusters of leaves. The walnut #171 has a dead crown but two or more bunches of stem sprouts with abundant leaves. I wonder if it will survive. I wonder if the leaves have a different stressed chemistry.. more or less well defended against herbivores. The #22 pecan is similar: dead crown with about a bushel of green healthy looking leaves from 1-2 m high stem sprouts.

Leaving the Woods at 7:30 via the W Dune trail I cut away the too abundant Cnidosculus nettle. It keeps coming back to compete with the Opuntia prickly pear.

No turtles anywhere except two old box turtle shells in the mud around the E Pond.

Out at the SW gate some Japanese honeysuckle was still blooming along the fence with abundant trumpet vine flowers.

At home I pick off 28 ticks. About two thirds are the medium small, but easily seen instars and one third the very tiny ticks.

Setting Trail Posts and Observing the Woods

Last two or three days I have labelled 85 of the posts I've placed at 50 m intervals along the twenty plus trails in the Woods.. a little over 2.5 miles. Each trail has a two letter abbreviation/ symbol NE, SW, NW, SE, SB, SC etc and the posts placed along the trails go from NE 0, NE 1, NE 2 etc to the end of the trail. Now it will be possible to be specific about where a particular, snail, mushroom, bird, turtle, fern etc.. is observed. I have about 15 more posts to label along some of the shorter trails. Each post has GPS coordinates shown to get an absolute sense of where it is placed. This should facilitate mapping and ultimately, the meter by meter field guide to the Woods I want to create.

This afternoon I found a small snapping turtle (size of my shoe) moving slowly down the Wash. Only one deer seen in the Woods this past week. Maybe they are better able to hide in the summer vegetation.. or maybe they have other places to feed and grow before hunting season. With the good rain recently, the mosquito population has exploded. The low ankle-high vegetation has clouds of them west of the West Pond. The ticks have also exploded. Each day I go the Woods I return with 15-25 ticks on me.. and I find more in the middle of the night that I've missed.

With the chainsaw, I removed the big pecan branch/ trunk, down by the large pecan across the NW entrance trail. Both ponds continue to be quiet. I have not seen any turtles there this summer. By the NE entrance numerous young small mud colored frogs are hopping away into the Woods.

The fungi in the Woods continue to be tremendous.. maybe the best diversity and abundance I've seen there. Spiders for some reason have been suppressed, or at least the number of webs I encounter across the trail has remained low. Some of the pretty yellow asters are blooming now. The trumpet vines along the western fence line are in full bloom. It is peak summer and the Woods are never more alive than now. The soil is damp from gentle rains and it is warm.

In the southeast corner and along the southern border the giant ragweed is growing rank, now 3-5 feet high.

After last summer's brutal heat and drought, surviving trees are having a great growing season this year.
Where trees have died, there are conspicuous light gaps in the forest shade where scores of butterflies.. hackberry emperors and others gather and bask on tree trunks. I wonder if the hackberry emperors have done so well this year because their host trees' foliage was stressed from last year and lacking chemical protection.

So Much Life

After three weeks away in Panama and North Carolina, I returned to the Woods to see what had happened. After a mild warm dry May, the Woods received a 1.3 inch rain Tuesday the 29th. I put on my water/ mud shoes and entered the Woods via the SW Gate at 9:45 AM. It was a cool 69F and overcast.. delightful. By the 150m post there were small pools of standing water. The first pools had several earthworms either drowned or swimming. I pulled out the largest and tossed to drier ground. The effect of this flooding run-off water on earthworm populations fascinates me. The unpredictability of the floods -they are not a regular part of the previous disturbance regime - likely means that populations of soil invertebrates such as worms are not well adapted and experience higher mortality from inundation. The worm species are largely introduced and themselves not part of the community that existed there 150-200 years prior.

At 200 m I came to an open sun gap where elm canopies were recently killed by Ophiostoma elm disease. There were a score of nymphalids there basking on the wet soil.. hackberry emperors, Polygonia question marks or commas,lycaenids, red admirals and others. I should have regular observations on the butterfly fauna in the Woods: species, timing, numbers host association etc. Many are associated with hackberry. I observed repeatedly today the lower branches of hackberry are defoliated.. and it begs the question how did this great population come to be.. a mass migration or a home grown population?

Tops of elms killed last summer are snapping in storm winds and coming down. The winds also brought down another small crop of bright green ash seeds. Now no sign of seedlings surviving from early summer massive ash seed production.

Great fungi all through the Woods with the rain, Auricularia ear fungus, Sarcoscypha coccinea scarlet elf cup, orange chantrelle-like, groups of Mycena-like small brown-tan agarics. Should start a dried collection from the Woods.

Lots of isopods everywhere.. some clustered on tops of broken stumps where they climbed to escape the floodwaters two nights previous.

Along Hackberry Alley two large active Carabids: bright green Calosoma scrutator the fiery searcher, and black Calosoma sayi???.. plus some mosquitoes there.

East pond down to 1.8 ft. Green horntail sphinx moth caterpillar was loaded with ~50 white parasitoid wasp eggs all over it.. and one large nymphal pentatomid with its beak extended, feeding on one of the parasitoid eggs or maybe feeding from the caterpillar. Watching from a 5-10 cm distance was a very small black (hyper?)parasitoid, size of a pteromalid(?).

Along the east grassy side of the tree loop I heard a sudden rustling and saw 20 feet away a pack of 4 young armadillos.. pink tails, pink brown noses, funny small elliptical rabbit ears up. They came nosing and foraging along the moist ground toward me. Three actually came to my feet and sniffed and explored my wet muddy shoes. Then one jumped and they all ran away - about 4-5 feet and started foraging again. How do these animals survive against larger predators?

By tree #85 on tree loop in a sunny grassy patch, there were hundreds of early instar hoppers feasting. Some of the trees I declared dead for having no leaves at end of April #22 pecan, #37 coffee tree.. now have stump sprouts or bunches of stem leaves from roots.. last gasp desperation crop ? or new life ? we'll see.

By Elm Bridge, water is flowing slowly. I found a group of 40-50 culicid larve.. and three large diving beetles.

At Barney's Jct. a large sharpshin (or Cooper's) flew east through the understory. Overhead a 100 feet west a red shouldered hawk was calling/ crying.

I should note the succession or phenology of weed species in the Woods.

West pond had a single night heron sitting on the depth post. I passed by and did not disturb. The trail southwest towards the Main SW trail was wet underfoot and grassy through the sedge. I am sure it was loaded with ticks. I removed > 50 later at home.

Tony and I returned Saturday to clear several larger blowdowns blocking the trail in 4-5 places and found a box turtle along the Tree Loop. No deer seen for the last 2-3 visits to the Woods.

Turtles, Ticks and a Flutter of Butterflies

Out to the Woods this Saturday morning at 9, through the NE Gate. Determined to walk and check some of the trails I seldom get to (North Rim and Southeast Trails). I walked the east leg of the Tree Loop. It is quite grown up in understory grasses and shrubs. I thought I should get a mower/ trimmer, clear the path again.. but then I found a 3 toed box turtle almost hidden in the luxurious vegetation and thought.. few folks here in the summer.. I will not be in the Woods often because of ticks.. may be best to let summer be the time for natural growth to regain and restore the natural cover.. let turtles and rabbits not encounter humans on cleared paths.
If I clear down trees across the trail and cut back briars and poison ivy, it may be best to let the Woods be as they are until autumn. I picked a few dozen mid sized ticks off my legs after walking through grassy sections of the trail.

It has been quite hot (mid 90's for several days now, April/ early May is too early for that). The Woods have grown very well.. thick green canopy and little visibility through the trees. Still the same dead 7 numbered trees on the Loop. I will replace with new selections.

I hopped across Island Crossing (water at pool there, was muddy like it was being stirred) - no water flowing. Water in wash had retreated at Elm Bridge to about 10 feet upstream.. no flow.

I walked the North Rim.. very overgrown.. but trail still easy to follow.. no barriers, vines, or blockages. At the west end the West Pond was at 2.20 ft. depth.. no turtles or other big animal life visible in the pond. The new West Trail still in good shape.. although wet/ muddy and could use those stepping stones. I shifted the south 70-100 m of the West Trail to connect to the Main SW trail at 150 m post... blue flags on the stretch of route moved. I'll keep it temporary for now and see if it continues to feel like an improvement.

Along the Main SW trail by Dragonfly corner there were scores to hundreds of butterflies - Hackberry Emperors and a few Painted Ladies.. like a Disney movie, as I walked along, clouds took flight.. maybe the second greatest natural density of butterflies I've seen. It was warm, still and at 11 o'clock a good large sunny spot. On the east side of that, a couple of elms have the fading foliage of Ophiostoma elm disease. It will be interesting to see how it progresses and what other trees succumb. The persimmons have dropped their cream white flowers to the forest floor. The bright chartreuse carpets of ash seeds cover and color the forest floor - marvelous.

No deer seen last two trips and somewhat surprisingly, few cobwebs across the trail. Mosquitoes are not bad.

I walked east and crossed over the West Dune trail.. stopping to clear a few remaining Cnidoscolus bull nettle. I'd like to eliminate that one small patch of plants. I walked out of the Woods along the Service Rd. past the Ragweed Delta to the SE Trail and took it north, renewing the pink paint blazes there.

Twilight Woods

This evening I entered the Woods at 8 PM through the curtain of sweet honeysuckle bloom aroma and soft humid warmth at the SW Gate. The trail was dry but soft underfoot. There were no pools of standing water or muddy patches remaining. A hundred yards in, the most remarkable thing this evening were the thousands upon thousands of long rounded green ash seeds covering the ground. Beneath the most prolific trees they were a thick layer of bright chartreuse green. They looked to have all fallen in the past week. Among them were the smaller rounded green cotyledons of unknown species. I walked the Main SW Trail to the Beaver Dam. Three turkey vultures have returned to the Buzzard's Roost there above the southside of the dam in an old elm tree. The forest is so much more green and fully leafed out than 3-4 weeks ago. It must be full leaf out now. From the beaver dam I trekked north to Tall Stump, then SW back to the Grandfather tree and continued across the W Dune trail.. stopping to cut away the half dozen bull nettle growing there.. then west past Two Friends where there seemed to be some major changes with fall of massive trunks.. but the evening light was growing dim..then back out towards the last golden patches of western post sunset light shining through the trees. The mosquitoes are increasing but not bad yet. I used a couple quick shots of Deet to keep them away. Returning home I found five ticks (so far).

Moonlight Walk Dogs

Been a while since I have been in the Woods so I decided to go for a walk as night was falling. At 8:30, with a bright gibbous moon high in the dusk sky, I came to the NE Gate. There were two large dragonflies patrolling there which I took to be a good sign - hope that mosquitoes might be in check with adult predators developed and ready to go. At the gate there was the soft sweet fragrance of the old privet blooms.. mostly gone now.. but still attracting moths. In the gathering dark the trail was familiar, if dim, and looked in good shape, although perhaps a bit overgrown. I walked along the escarpment and heard barred owls calling from the big walnut. Then I dropped to the Elm Bridge where I was surprised by the barking, close-at-hand of dogs, maybe 50 feet downstream. They sounded ferocious and charging toward me in the dark - tangentially. I ran towards them shouting and they ran away south. Not good for them to be there. Impact on rabbits, skunks, voles, mice, all manner of small game. The Elm Bridge had water at the crossing.. not sure if it was flowing. I walked the loop out the EW Fence line trail to Hackbery Alley, put down the broken tree across the Alley and on to the East Pond, back out the Northern Loop.. by then too dark to see much; but could stay with the trail across Island Crossing up Pipeline and back out the gate. Now I want to return in the early morning light to see what I missed.

Tornadic Spring and New Life in the Woods

April 13 Norman had a tornado tear across town at 4 PM. It brought 0.3 inch rain to my backyard. Last night there was an additional 0.55 inch rain. Mesonet says total 0.99 inch rain in the past three days. I went to the NW entrance 10:45 to see if the last week of strong winds had brought down any trees in the Woods.
The entry is sweet with odor of invasives, multiflora rose, now in full bloom, and Japanese honeysuckle, just starting.
The W. Pond had 2.52 ft of depth and the E. Pond was at 3.3 ft. No turtles visible in either.
Pair of Canada geese continue nesting WSW of W. Pond. First saw them there April 7 with Paul and Claire. At the north end of the W Pond from the galled trunk of the mulberry, a graveled path or one with stepping stones would be good, 15-20 feet to edge of sedge border of pond. White daisies in bloom there along the main trail.
Barred owl was calling at noon along the Main SW trail. There was a strange bright small heron (yellow-crowned night heron maybe) wading slowly along the WNW side of the flooded Ragweed Delta. The bird was gray with yellow cheek stripe and same color head stripe with longer crest feathers extending from the topknot backward. The legs were red (problem), beak black, with a black hood extending down along the back of the neck.
I walked from the E Pond along the Northern Loop to Island Crossing.. water flowing well there.. skipped across.. up to the Tree Loop. It looks like #24 and #37 hawthorn & coffee tree sapling, respectively, are definitely dead. # 22 cored pecan is prob dead #85, biggest walnut on Tree Loop is alive to the south but the north and central crown are looking moribund. Big walnut #171 just off Tree Loop looks almost entirely dead. Just two small clusters of stem leaves along the lower trunk. Interesting to see if there is any chance of recovery.
At Elm Bridge, cut or find a second log, same size as bridge log or slightly smaller diameter and fix it (lash) to small elms on either side of the Wash as a handrail.
Down Southeast Trail, 1st boxelder down across trail, there was a box turtle.. and on the upper dead trunk a good full growth of Auricularia fungi. At second down boxelder there was an old bleached box turtle shell.
The tipulid crane fly numbers seem to have finally dropped way off and surprisingly no mosquitoes .. except maybe along the West Trail as I was leaving. Cold front arrived last night with rain may have slowed them down. Trail needs new pink and blue paint.
At the Beaver Dam, water was flowing well out from the Woods.
Below the Beaver Dam I encountered a doe and two newish fawns.. perhaps the same I had seen a week ago, same location.
West of the Grandfather tree an old dead persimmon or hackberry(?) covered with Schizophyllum commune, split gill fungus, stood out white in the shaded understory along the water of the Main SW trail.
Over at Dragonfly Corner there was another larger doe and two older yearlings (two year olds?) I think this is the trio I most often see. They did not seem alarmed. The young showed their white tails..but then did not run. I waved at them showing my white hands and stood and watched while they stood and watched me. Two or three single bits of cotton with seed of cottonwood(?) landed on me.. early for this.
In the ankle deep water 120 m NE of the SW Gate there was something swimming ahead of me like a small fish or young snake. I did not see it, only a couple swirls of water ahead of me as I waded along. SW Trail had no water from SW Gate to ~85 m at largest green ash #46 at W Trail jct. The damp trail is covered with small green rounded cotyledons of ?? just starting.
Another (small, young) box turtle on the W. trail just south of 100 m post was burrowing along leaving the flattened cleared curling paths through the soft wet mud and leaves that had puzzled me previously.

Troll Under the Elm Bridge

Down by the Elm bridge this evening I saw a large snapping turtle underwater 2-3 m upstream sitting quiet as death. I tickled his front with a twig and no response. He looked dead. I lifted a front foot an inch with a stick and then he moved.. but not much. I hope his stealth strategy results in a good meal of one of the snakes that live along the wash, or some other nutritious meal. Maybe I should transport him to the west pond to dine on crayfish.

The southern Woods are still flooded ankle deep along the Main SW trail from the 0.95 inch rain four days ago; but all the trails in the northern half are fine.. damp but no standing water anywhere. The Lonicera japonica honeysuckle, box elder, green ash and other fast growing plants are in full expansion mode. I'll trim some trail sides with a weed whip. Mercifully, I am not seeing poison ivy along trails.
More of the very late leaf flushing trees (walnut and other) along the tree loop are now putting out very small stem leaves up and down their trunks.. not abundant.. not healthy but maybe enough to survive and recoup if the summer is moderate. Other walnut, pecan and coffee trees flushed good healthy crops of leaves a week to ten days ago.

Lots of deer tracks in the soft damp black soil of the trails.

The two ponds continue to be quiet.. only an occasional insect struggling on the surface. Both coated with films of dust and pollen from the spring.

Rain Pummeled Woods

The rain began just after midnight. Heavy but intermittent it doused central OK and the Woods all during the day. The total amounted to 95/100ths. At 5 I drove (with some trepidation) to near the NE Gate, being sure to park on high, more well drained ground. I opened the gate and entered the green wet Woods. All along the trail, bud scales beaten off trees by the drumming rain littered the path. Shrubs, Russian Olive, Privet and low branches all weighted down with the recent rain reached into or across the trail. At the Elm Bridge a solid river of muddy brown water was touching the underside of the elm crossing log. I grabbed a pole and walked/ leapt across to the sand bank.

Along the way a few new branches were down across the trail, each tangled with vines and gradually descending to earth on its own schedule. Out the EW Trail and on to the East Pond, I was delighted to see a snapping turtle on the east end. It looked like the one I had encountered below the beaver dam heading up stream. The East Pond was at 3.38 feet and the West Pond was 2.52 feet.

Two young deer east of Barney Jct did not seem terribly alarmed with my presence. The trail loop back including the Northern Loop was in good shape. I crossed the wash at Island Crossing with a good mighty leap but the ground was surprisingly soft where I took to the air leaving me a half foot short of the eastern bank and a quick splash with my good shoes and wool slacks.. never mind. I was on my way out and happy again.

Nother Turtle Marvelous Morning

Up early this April morning and decided to go see the Woods first thing. The SW Gate entrance is suddenly overgrown with bursting spring growth, honeysuckle, clematis and dewy grasses. Inside the gate, the trail NE was dry or drying to the first 50 m mark and there it continued to be sodden. I took the fork to the new West Trail but did not go far, as it ran through shallow pools in wet forest too. Bright white new polypores have emerged from some of the decaying oak(?) snags there.. but no Auricularia jelly fungi.

The entire area of the Woods was 'hopping' with crane flies. Lilting and bouncing in short sorties. I wonder what they are up to? Attracting mates? They often don't go any distance but seem to continually 'bounce' in jittery flight and then sit or cling to some perch for a few seconds before beginning to bounce again. Two weeks ago I guessed I was seeing the peak of crane fly emergence and activity - wrong. They continue to be superabundant all over the wet Woods.. a great source of food for nesting birds.

I reentered the Woods via the NE Gate and slowly walked the Tree Loop, savoring each turn in the trail and each sight. I encountered (the same?) box turtle as yesterday as it was ascending the gully trail descending to the Wash. I saw three pairs of squirrels in different parts of the Woods, all playing 'tag' chasing each other rapidly skittering up and down the trunks of trees. More squirrels than I've ever seen there in one visit.. maybe some courtship activity? A flock of robins were hanging out along the east shore of the East Pond. The Woods are at or near their finest. Everything is moving or growing.. every animal is out eating or being eaten.. plants are growing faster than they will at any other time of the year. Life is in high gear. Temp today due to break 93 F and the soil is still moist or wet.

The red buds are now dropping the last 40 % of their flowers. Life is raining down from the sky. All along SW Trail pools west of the dam the water surface is covered with catkins and samaras (shed from elms) and other small seeds or vegetative bits. The coffee trees Gymnocladus are flushing their new double pinnate leaves. Along the wash, the Amur Honeysuckle L. maackii is now at its most visible with 2-3 m tall crowns of bright white flowers. There are more than I previously thought.. maybe 30-40 plants.. and up on the N Rim trail there is a new honeysuckle I am not sure I've seen in the Woods previously, one beautiful burst of red flowers of coral honeysuckle L. sempervirens, 2-3 m up at the edge of the escarpment, just west of the big rotten log across the trail. The poison ivy 75 feet east of the NE Gate along the fence has leaves mostly fully expanded and bright green.

I started listing the trees and shrubs I've seen in the Woods this past month and came up with 29-30:

1. Acer negundo Box Elder
2. Carya illinoensis Pecan
3. Carya texana Black Hickory
4. Catalpa speciosa Catalpa
5. Celtis Hackberry
6. Crataegus viridis Hawthorn
7. Diospyros virginiana Persimmon
8. Fraxinus pennsylvanica Green Ash
9. Gymnocladus dioica Kentucky Coffeetree
10. Juglans nigra Black walnut
11. Juniperus Eastern Redcedar
12. Morus rubra Mulberry
13. Platanus Sycamore
14. Populus deltoides Cottonwood
15. Pyrus Pear
16. Quercus macrocarpa Bur Oak
17. Quercus marilandica Blackjack Oak
18. Quercus shumardii Shumard Oak
19. Quercus stellata Post Oak
20. Salix nigra Black Willow
21. Sapindus Soapberry
22. Sideroxylon (Bumelia) lanuginosa Chittamwood
23. Ulmus americana American Elm
24. Ulmus rubra Slippery Elm

shrubs
25. Cornus drummondii Roughleaf Dogwood
26. Eleagnus Russian Olive
27. Ligustrum Privet
28. Lonicera maackii Amur Honeysuckle
29. Lonicera fragrantissima Winter Honeysuckle
30. Viburnum

.. and some other unidentified willow(?) with small round leaves; and a mystery hickory.

Turtle Spring, Sweet Woods

Good 4-5 inch spring rains on 19 March and the warmest month of March on record for Oklahoma are driving a burst of spring growth. Yesterday all over the Woods every tendril of Lonicera honeysuckle was reaching out with new quick growth. Box elder saplings expanded new green stems and bright green leaves. Along the open trails in the NE quarter, grasses, chickweed, bedstraw, henbit and other annuals were quickly closing over the bare trail.
Two nights ago, I mowed a meter wide swath around the NE Tree Loop to keep it clear for the Phenology class to use. I went the next morning to enjoy a slow solitary walk around the Loop to catch up on each tree and what it was doing. I gave each tree a health score 1 good-4 moribund and concluded four trees I had flagged were probably dead.
Several mulberry trees along the loop have suddenly flushed leaves and produced their distinctive flowers which will become the fruit. I did not know the species was on the Loop. Sapindus soapberry and a mystery Carya are flushing new fresh leaves this week. The oaks, post, blackjack, bur and shumard are all pushing out new soft leaves red and green, or green tinged with yellow. Celtis hackberry are just a little behind the oaks with small bright green leaves expanding. Elm and redbuds have had their leaves out for a fortnight. Eleagnus Russian olive shrubs are covered in soft yellow flowers making the air sweet and attracting all the pollinators. The Eleagnus by the NE Gate at dusk is covered up in noctuid moths and small insects. Walnut and pecan seem to be the hold out species with few or no leaves produced in the crowns.. a few leaves just barely starting now.

Arthropods are beginning their year too. After dusk when I finished mowing the Loop I found a small cloud of several hundred chironomid midges gathered in a 50 cm wide column over the tailgate of my car.. a swarm of males waiting for mates. I found the first mosquito of the year in the Woods the next morning. There will be many more with the wet spring and abundant pools of standing water. Ticks unfortunately are becoming a problem again too. They are not abundant yet; but soon will be.

Bird song in the Woods is almost continuous now during daylight hours. Nesting season is here. I watched male and female cardinals bathing in the shallow pools below the beaver dam with flapping wings and flying water.. some meters apart, but probably a pair. I was delighted to find a three toed box turtle out along the Loop trail just north of the biggest walnut. It has been a long time since there were many of them active in the Woods. A tough hot dry past year probably had many of them just shut down and waiting in their burrows.
A week ago I was clearing the drainage below the dam and came upon a medium sized young adult snapper turtle scrunging its way upstream. Its shell protruded above the 2-3 inch deep water and it was nosing along under the rotten woody debris looking for a meal. I imagine it had worked its way up the drainage from the river. I hope it stays in the Woods, as the other snappers I think may have died in the drought and heat last year.

Two days after the rain, the northern trails were all drying and in good shape but the southern quarter including the Main SW Trail is still flooded with ankle deep water two weeks later. A week ago, in the evening, I flushed a flock of 5 or 6 ducks out of the flooded SW Woods as I walked along the trail in my water boots. This ponding of water and growth of surface floating algal biomass is marvelous to see. The warm shallow water over the forest soil is full of ecology. Around the pools of drying shallow water along the Two Friends trail in the SW, scores of crane flies are gathered, probably laying eggs where there will be good rotting leaf litter in the weeks ahead. A large healthy slime mold has crawled up on to the cut big pecan tree that fell across the EW Fence Line Trail near the east end. It has produced its thin outer shell of lime and is turning into a spore mass. I collected some of the spidery bright golden threads of slime mold plasmodium from the base of a young dead elm by the water east of the hollow cottonwood.

I see white-tailed deer 3 out of 4 trips to the Woods now.. most often three deer, but sometimes a larger group of 8-10.. down by the beaver dam heading north or just east of the East Pond, or crossing the shallow water east of the Grandfather cottonwood.

Jackson has helped me identify, I believe correctly, the mystery Lonicera that has puzzled me in the Woods west of the Bur Oak Bridge for a few years now, Lonicera maackii, Amur honeysuckle, an invasive Asian species.

Vernal Equinox, Spring Green Up and Morels

At 5 PM I went to the Woods to see what yesterday's long heavy rainstorm had done. The Woods are transforming. The spring green that was earlier on the ground in the Lonicera honeysuckle and Stellaria bedstraw, is now suddenly spreading upward as Acer negundo box elder saplings 1 meter tall leaf out abundantly throughout the northwestern Woods understory.
The 4.1 inches of rain filled the West Pond up to 2.74 feet and floated the big northern log to lodge next to the water gauge post. The East Pond was filled to 3.2 feet.
East of the West Pond I startled a white-tail that ran ahead of me eastward on the path. Then at the East Pond I found Ana and Jelena excited with their success finding five fresh morels.
The Woods south by the Grandfather tree are flooded (no surprise) but water is draining through the dam at a good rate and the standing water may be gone in a day or two.
I was struck again with the question of what happens to all the soil fauna ants, millipedes, mites, isopods, microarthropods and other species living in the now submerged leaf litter. How many climbed trees to escape?
East of Tall Stump, the trail was drained with only isolated pools until near the Elm Bridge. The flow there was steady beneath the elm log. Southwest and southeast of the bridge I could see where water had moved in a broad sheet across the forest floor, sweeping away litter and leaving the bare soil.
East of the bridge, up on the escarpment, the Tree Loop was also transformed. There was a delightful combination of a solid carpet of fresh green bedstraw, chickweed, violets, henbit and other ephemerals.. paired with pink purple blooming redbuds in the sub canopy. Prettiest part of the Woods today. The past few days have pushed phenology along. The black hickory is opening large, prominent leaf buds and leafing out. Walnut leaf buds are opening. The bur oak has very small young leaves emerging. The mystery trees at the south end of the loop now look to be mulberry with very small new leaves and small green hanging flowers - that will become the deep purple or white fruit. Several of the younger 4-7 meter tall elms at the beginning of the trail, stressed or moribund from last summer, are now sprouting stem leaves, with no sign of life in the upper crown. The crane flies seem to have finished their earlier abundant hatch.. only a few here and there. A couple new beetles in the Lindgren trap. No turtles or other large life evident moving in the ponds. The new West Trail was under ankle deep water past 50 meters. The poison ivy has not yet begun to leaf out. It will be interesting to see how quickly this portion of the Woods west of the cattails drains.

More spring rain

Thank goodness, another 1.2 inches slow soaking Saturday night. The West Pond is up to 2.27 and the East Pond is at 3.1? but is missing top of depth gauge. Three deer just southwest of the second largest cottonwood.

More Trees Cool Mild Spring Morning

At the NE Gate to the Woods, the morning was cool and mild (50 F). The Woods had 0.32 inch rain 2 days past on Thursday. The wash was full to the Elm Bridge but not flowing. The East Pond was 2.64 and the West Pond was 2.08.. after days of abundant 20-30 mph drying wind.

I added a second old pear to the Tree Loop as # 95; added 6 (largish cottonwoods and willow) in the SE corner of the Woods (dozen more mapped in SE would be good). Measured and mapped 11 more ash and elm, W of the dam along the Main SW trail.

I saw one cottontail rabbit running north end of Tree Loop. Two yearling white-tailed deer were heading east by the dam. Did not see older doe. Flock of juncos was foraging along the east leg of the Tree Loop.. closest to the field. Pair of mallards hanging out in the East Pond were there today. Cries of red-shouldered hawk were loud along the Northern Loop. Many large Tipulid craneflies are flying and mating.. may be near peak emergence this 3-4 days. A half dozen were on my car parked by the Woods.

Many/ most of the elms have produced their samaras. Should be able to ID elm spp. now: samaras bare faced with a peripheral fringe of hairs, flowers clustered one per stem = U. americana ; samaras with hairs on face and flowers branching racemes = slippery U.rubra.
Most of the hawthorn in the Woods are blooming. The first green leaves are just starting to emerge on the box elder. First green leaves on tall cottonwoods just starting. Leaves are half flushed on the 3-4 pears. Redbud flower buds are swelling open and showing some pink. Eleagnus Russian olive and Ligustrum privet have many and most leaves out, respectively.

Oak at home has hanging catkins but oaks in the Woods have not broken their buds. Nothing from walnut, coffee tree, pecan, hickory, persimmon, hackberry, green ash. Along the border of the eastern field with the Woods Cardamine bittercress, Houstonia bluets (purple), Lamium amplexicaule and purpureum henbit, Stellaria chickweed were in bloom.

The Woods are still open and clear.. but will be transformed in this month ahead.

Update Tree Phenology

Phenology class in the Woods this afternoon. We saw elms in flower but also several hawthorns flowering and three pears with green leaves just erupting (two small pears were on the south side of the Pipeline Trail just 50-100 feet west of the Tree Loop.)

Signs of the Changing Season

Out this evening for a lovely twilight walk in through the NE Gate. The sky was calm and the air still held the springtime warmth of the day. I crossed over the Wash and paused at the eastern end of the northern ridge trail. I noticed the soft green verdure that has begun to grow in only the past two days, all across the base of the south facing ridge. The almost 80 F of the past three days has the low ground cover honeysuckle across the Woods beginning to open. The raised honeysuckle vines climbing up 2 and 3 feet above the ground have had green leaves out since late January. Standing by the East Pond and looking east, I see the green flush of the taller elms, the first of the trees to begin their season's growth. Although, looking up into the top branches of the Grandfather cottonwood I can see green buds swelling open there too.
With the forecast rain later this week and the warmth of the past 3-4 days, spring is about to let loose.
Ten days ago on Feb 26 Tim and I were measuring and mapping trees and saw (my first) returning turkey vulture of the year. [Thoughts of intensifying a small 100m x 100 m block in the tree loop with identification of every tree over 10 cm DBH.]

Yesterday I sat for a peaceful half hour after dark in the Woods, enjoying the bright gibbous moon and bright Venus and Mars.. and this morning discovered my first tick of the year.
This evening walking in the Woods I also felt the first brush of two bits of gossamer - the first strands of spider silk across a trail.
The Woods are on the cusp of another season of life.

Eventful days of spring

This past few days lots of activity in the Woods. In preparation for Geog/ Zoo 4970 Phenology class I numbered 94 trees on the Tree Tutorial loop from the NE Gate. There were 15 spp. plus a couple of invasive sub trees/ shrubs. Once leaves are out, I hope to add a few more .. maybe a Sapindus soapberry, maybe a green ash, maybe a surprise or two. Tim and I went out Sunday and measured and mapped another 25 trees
In the SW corner at the end of the day I placed four more 22 inch short steel posts: two along the 2 Friends Trail and two along the W. Dune Trail. need one or two more for the SW corner. I placed six more posts from the north end of the new West Trail to near its end. Total trail length about 340 m.

In the Western Wash there was a dead raccoon about 50 feet above the Elm Bridge.. the sort of place where a rabid raccoon might die?
Today, Tuesday Kirsten, Pradeep and I assembled with a dozen phenology students at the NE Gate. Rain or severe weather had been forecast but it was fine after light .08 inch morning rain. Students quickly selected 30 trees per group and gathered first phenological observations for upload to National Phenology Network online. I was happy with the way that the Tree Loop meshed with the exercise.
Today the first of March temperatures were predicted to break 80 F. I think we made it to 77 or so. We all returned to the Tree Loop and second phenological observations were recorded in addition to nine more larger trees for each group from the broader open floodplain Woods.
At the end of the day Pradeep, Kirsten, Ryan, Megan and I drove to a tall sycamore on the northwest fence line. Pradeep climbed well up into the crown and Ryan hauled up a time lapse camera and battery for Pradeep to secure. Good location... great work. Hope for good hourly images of spring coming to the Woods from March 1 onward. Walking there, Pradeep observed around ten deer in the NW Woods split between two different groups.

Warm Days Cool Nights - Spring Butterflies

Yesterday I worked on the tree tutorial loop starting at the NE Gate. Pleasant mild day. I saw two big orange fritillaries chasing each other around a big pecan tree and two individual morning cloak butterflies flying through the Woods; a big green-eyed cranefly at the same pecan. Sadly found a dead young snapping turtle at Island Crossing - recently deceased, no reason evident. Three big live leaches still attached together on its underside. In the afternoon, Ron and Bruce helped me confirm many of the trees on the tutorial loop including the fern at the junction with the Pipeline Trail - ebony spleenwort, Asplenium platyneuron. Ron corrected my identification of chickasaw plum and I accept that it probably is hawthorn Crataegus. Published records of the part of the Woods flora include Crataegus viridis. Many of the elms along the loop have opened yellowish brown flowers, particularly the taller trees with the higher branches more exposed to the warming sun. At home 80% of the lilac leaf buds have begun to open and show new green leaves emerging and the first two daffodils are blooming.

Quick check on Spring

10 AM morning visit to the Woods through the SW Gate. This past fortnight we've had abruptly some of the coldest weather of the winter (hi teens, low twenties) then some warming and a few inches of good snow (equal to 0.25 inch water) followed by rapid warming and a 0.1 inch rain. The combination of cold, to prime development, and warmth and water may start spring moving faster.
In the northern third of the Ragweed Delta, bittercress Cardamine was beginning to show its first clusters of small white flowers. The new leaves are edible in spring and I enjoyed a small green snack. On the south end of the Dune Trail, I encountered 3 whitetail - 2 yearlings and one older(?) .. they ran east along the south Boundary and then north on the white trail.
The ponds were full and stable.. East @ 2.75 feet; West @ 2.17 feet. There was water flowing at the Elm Bridge. I should set up a depth gauge above the Elm Bridge along the fence across the stream.
I measured the SW section trails: the Two Friends to Leaning Elm trail (2 posts plus ~ 120 feet to the Elm); and the W Dune trail two posts and a 100 feet to the S Boundary Trail.} One post for the 2 Friends - S Boundary Cutoff. Yellow flags currently mark all measured locations for posts.
I returned to the SW Gate via a route running along Chautauqua I had not established previously.. too often wet underfoot.. blocked with fallen trees and near significant Poison ivy. All that notwithstanding, I think I will go ahead and establish the route, cut the few fallen logs and trim out the near poison ivy. The route connects the northwest to the southwest in a way that no other trail provides. It will be a good route dry Sunday mornings absent the Chautauqua traffic. Found a broken newish shovel (used spring 2010 for setting the herp traps?).

Ice at Elm Bridge

Chilly day today, 23F with a north wind 14 m.p.h. I went to the NE entrance to the Woods at 10. I was curious about the Woods in the cold, after our gentle 0.25 inch rain Thursday 9 Feb. The East Pond was up to 2.71 and West Pond was up to 2.17 - both looking moderately full.
Below the Elm Bridge, the shallow water had frozen in concentric fractal like shapes. A small wren was investigating.

I walked most of the northern trails and did not see deer or fresh tracks. There were older frozen tracks of a dog below the largest main culvert. There were abundant feeding flocks of robins busily flipping leaves over on the forest floor.. and several bright red male cardinals tagging along with the group. East of Hackberry Alley there was a flicker calling and then hammering a tree and a hawk complaining.
I placed two more steel stakes (Barney Jct. Trl.and south Hackberry). I need to find two more for north Hackberry.
I checked species ID on 5-10 more trees from #160 to #200 off trail northwest of the Pipeline Trail.

Except for the birds, it felt like the Woods were locked down tight.. everyone safe in their beds before the approach of the coldest two days and nights of the winter.

I began the day early at the Woods and wound it up at sunset there too. I placed about 35 more of the short steel 50 m trail posts. Now only about five still remain. Then I can start to tag the posts with sequential location information. Seventy plus 50 m segments are marked now, 3.5 km.
The morning at 7:30 was cold (38F) and windy. From the NW entrance I encountered three deer near the big cottonwood with post.. doe and her two yearlings. She did not run fast or far. I think she may have become acclimated to people. Her two yearlings, are more flighty and go bounding away white tails flashing. There was a smell of skunk I must have startled by the West Pond - may belong to the burrows just up the hill. Dead possum on the trail pretty well decimated now.. fur on the trail.

Before sunset I returned to finish another segment and encountered seven or eight deer NE of the East Pond. Cottontail dashing in the eastern woods. Both morning and evening I watched flocks of robins foraging in the dried leaves on the forest floor. I thought how the new conditions of peri-urban ecology would affect the life and experience of an individual robin. Bugs and beetles are there as they have been for centuries..but now in winter, invasive green plants Lonicera honeysuckle and Ligustrum privet provide a different foraging environment. Individuals still experience the prior ecological relationships; but now have layered on top of that, new ecological effects, changed vegetation phenology/ species; flooding from run-off, the din of traffic on busy Highway 9 closeby.

Soft Soil, Steel Posts, Chilly Day

After Thursday night's 0.2 inch rain, the Main SW Trail had drained clear. It looked as if water had washed up to the lodged leaning ash. I set nine new 22 inch steel stakes at 50 m intervals from the SW Gate to 85 ft. west of the Dam; and seven along the South Boundary Trail to just beyond the G10 post; and one more on the Dune Trail just south of the dune crest.

I rolled up the vinyl rolls for the three eastern-most herp arrays and stored them with the minnow traps on top of the closed buckets.. ready to be deployed.

Three or four white-tailed deer were south of the East Pond. The water level of the East Pond was 2.7 ft and the West Pond was 2.22 ft. Fresh dog tracks along the main SW trail.

Water at Elm Bridge covered the top of the steel stake there; and was flowing gently.

I walked a game trail from the Ponds Entrance through the willows and sedge along Chautauqua.

Cold 45F and windy 18 mph NW day.

Late January Clear Morning

Met Gary and Ryan at NW Gate and entered via Ponds Trail. The West Pond was up to 2.20 ft and East Pond 2.75 ft after the 1.4 inch rain this week. Amazed and pleased to find the floating net turtle trap from ecology sitting in overgrown sedges. Near the ponds we heard a pair of barred owls in the southern Woods calling each other - at 10 in the morning! Wonder what was going on?
The strong winds before the rain brought down across the trail a couple of mid sized dead tops from hackberry, west and (old) east end of Ravine Trail. I cleared with saw. On the upper Ravine Trail the three clumped Lonicera fragrantissima were all blooming. Found a few fresh leaves of Japanese honeysuckle flushing out. At the West Pond new dead possum on the north side of the trail.

Spring rains or winter?

Brief end of the day out at the Woods. I wanted to see what last night's 1.4 inch rain had done. After the long dry January the land was growing winter-parched, cracks in the soil. Entering via the SW Gate I just passed the 100 m mark on the Main SW Trail when I saw the shallow flood of water in the sedges and forest. Maybe 2-3 inches deep, it pooled in an interesting pattern that should help explain the patterns of the vegetation, the death of trees like bur oak that cannot survive flooded roots, the thick stands of young green ash that can. I walked back south to the South Boundary Trail and then across the W. Dune trail following fresh deer tracks in the soft soil of the trail. I saw a few white-tailed deer running north across the water, into the Woods. Not many deer in there these past few weeks.
It will be interesting to see if this late January rain will spur spring growth with the run of 50 and 60 degree F days we've had.. or if the plants will hold back with the likelihood that we have more cold winter ahead.

Snails, Cattails and New Trees

Marvelous warm day in the Woods, mid 60’s. I went to the NW cattail swamp. While the two ponds are still well filled and holding their depth, the swamp is mostly dry with the lack of rain (4/100ths inch in the past 3.5 weeks). The swamp had no standing water, but the soil was still wet/ saturated. I walked out into the cattails and looked back to the NW and observed the striking sharp boundary between the old dry dead gray cattails and the greenish, yellowish brown sedges.. a sharp contour line. I was delighted to find one of the 1955 Carpenter heavy steel posts where I had searched the cattails this summer in vain. Recorded location. I lifted willow logs off the wet swamp soil and found 6 or 7 clusters of young isopods, 80-100 in a bunch with 2-3 older (adult?) isopods with each cluster. There were also lots of snails, mostly the flat, round Helisoma with a good many Physa, with their rising spirals. The sedge contour band width was about 80 ft., beginning about 5 ft. NW of Carpenter’s post. The cattails in the central zone were like an amoeboid superorganism with lobes like pseudopods. Interesting to trace the advance or retreat of the boundary with annual precip changes.

I checked 75 of student’s 132 tree I.D.s.; and corrected one third. Must check the remaining 50. I added another 8 trees mostly in the NW corner. Many trees larger than 40 cm DBH are not tagged and not in the database. Too many, to do more than a good sample. Example: there are another 15-20 green ash the same size as the ones I recorded, distributed around the NW section of the swamp extending onto dry land close to Chautauqua. Now ~ 300 trees with permanent tags identified. Getting enough to begin to make a partial tree map indicating where the different species are primarily located.

South of the big cottonwood next to the Carpenter post a herp trap bucket was open. I fished around in the muck and found the skeleton of an armadillo. I need to take down herp arrays and firmly close the buckets.

Trees

Tim and I added 29 trees to the database today and corrected five other spp. I.D. Added first sycamore in the Woods. We worked from the West Wash west and south using the Trans OWP trail as our south boundary. Many more to do; but we made great progress today. Tim spotted small group of deer in SE. Warm day (low 60's). Noticed walnuts bleeding watery sap by the tag nail wound. Tim commented that warming and rising sap in winter placed trees in danger of frost damage when sap freezes and damages tissue under the bark. Leaving the Woods, we found Claire and Hope by the E pond watching Claire's feeder in hopes of catching and banding titmice.

Another Dog

Out in the Woods at 3 p.m. today. (I met Joe at the SW Gate and discussed drainage and water in the Woods.)
Later I surprised a sleeping new dog at the top of the ravine trail. It came running at me, barking; and then ran and disappeared into the brush when I ran towards it. It was black with tan face markings; size of a lab, face like a mastiff. I saw no collar. With the demise of the old mangy dog, this new dog is not a welcome addition.
I saw no deer or other four-footed wildlife. Lots of robins foraging in the leaves with the coming chance of rain.
Found new Carpenter (?) post ~ > 200 ft. w. of the new post found yesterday. It looks like the sewer line excavation work 40 years ago probably displaced or eliminated many of the posts.

The ponds are holding up OK. West Pond was 1.98 feet and the East Pond was 2.06 feet. No rain for quite a while.
The Woods are very open now with all the leaves down. It is the best time for exploring.
The low green leaves of Geum are evident and the green of a henbit-like plant..maybe Glechoma gill, Creeping Charlie.

Cool, mid 50's F, overcast, dry.

Rerouting Northern Trail

This morning I entered the Woods NE Gate and worked on the new North Rim Trail. I rerouted a portion of the trail around the rabbit warren / animal den at the base of the oak snag and placed blue topped cedar posts at 50 m intervals. This area of the Woods appears to have a greater diversity of young trees. Walnut is fairly common in the junipers. Walnut is known for allelopathic poisoning of the soil. I wonder if Juniper are tolerant.
Decades past, an east west band of the Woods was cut and trenched to bury sewer line (same line as Pipeline Trail) .. manhole cover is north near fence.. rather anomalous. I discovered one more of Carpenter's 1955 posts up near the northern fence line NE of the ravine trail. I'll rename the entire ravine and north rim trails as one combined North Rim Trail and use red dots with the blue blazes. The trail is 350 m from the jct with the Trans OWP trail by the West Pond to the jct with the Northern Loop near the Western Wash.
I also flagged a tentative possible link north to the fence boundary where a new gate could be useful. Lots of poison ivy at the northern end and a small animal passage dug out beneath the fence. Good for camera.
It continues to be very dry The pool above island crossing is dry; but good chance of rain Monday.
I distributed the 66 twenty two inch heavy steel rods (for 50 m trail markers): 25 at NE Gate, 25 at Ponds Entrance and 16 at SW Gate. Another two or three dozen would be enough. Have not figured out the best way to tag/ label markers.

Ponds

Met Rich, Jessica and Thayer this afternoon around 3 to go to the Ponds in the Woods..marvelous day low 70's. Seine and pole net captured abundant populations of large Daphnia pulex in the sunny west pond. R, J and T took samples to see if Chaoborus were there (none found). Samples from the east pond yielded far fewer.. but there were abundant copepods, Acanthocyclops, plus diving beetles and misc other. No evidence of any Gambusia in either pond. May be good if they can remain fishless this spring. Rich and Thayer found dead Corbicula in the east pond.. and commented that they do not like anoxic water.. may have arrived on feet of waterfowl. Interesting to note that ponds were dry from summer heat/ drought until October 8 2011. Populations have had three months to grow from epiphia eggs.

New Year's Day trees

Beautiful clear cold New Year's day. I went to the Woods through the SW gate at 2:30 to find some more of the big trees.
Along the Dune, I discovered several large Bumelias, one 68 cm in diameter, maybe the largest Bumelia in the Woods. This species is commonly broken more than other trees of the same age and size. The wood is heavy and dense; but the main trunk is often broken off at 3-5 meters, then vigorously resprouts. This large Bumelia was home to some animal that gathered fresh green juniper leaves I could see inside the top of the hollow trunk. Bumelias still have some of their green elliptical-obovate leaves remaining.
The Woods are quite dry now. The soil west of the Beaver Dam is like dried peat moss. The leafy mould is crisp and dry. Skunks, armadillos or other foraging animals have turned over a large area of the forest floor northwest of the Dam, looking for food. This seems to be a favorite foraging spot for them.
Moving east on the South Boundary trail I measured a few more large old dead bur oaks.. probably all the same age cohort. I wonder what killed them- drought? In the western Woods it was probably flooding(?) Need some good stand reconstruction. At the Willow basin I measured the largest black willow, then quit and began to walk home when I met Joe and Laura. We shared our walk out together talking about the Woods and Joe's air quality work. No deer seen today.