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.