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.