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.