Party Elm and Wild Dogs

Morning walk in the Woods from the SW Gate today at 9:30. Marvelous with boots to walk along in shallow yellow tea-colored water. Water still present before SW post #2 @ 100m.
I watched a small (bathtub-sized) patch of sunlit water alive with wrigglers.. and one rapidly feeding dytiscid or hydrophilid larva.. a water tiger.. near the same place I had previously watched a similar assemblage at the west end of the East West trail. Until now adult mosquito density has been surprisingly low or moderate.. but that is getting ready to change. In the next week to ten days there will be clouds of adults in there.
I walked down to the dam then up to East Pond and south along the Big Trees trail. I approached a yearling doe who steadfastly was looking south away from me and I was downwind. It did not run but was alert and listening intently southward adjusting its ears. Eventually it moved along and I discovered quickly why it was not concerned about me. Two or three wild dogs came bounding up through the brush barking at me. I yelled back and ran towards them and they ran away.. a dirty yellow lab and german shepherd and maybe a third.
On my way out I noticed a group of hackberry emperor butterflies. They were lining the trunk of an elm dying with dutch elm disease. Closer inspection, the tree was loaded with insect life. 47-50 hackberry emperors on the bottom 15 feet of trunk height and easily that many more in the next 15 feet up. One Polygonia comma butterfly, Alaus the eyed elaterid, one armored red brown Polistes wasp focussed on one attractive crevice in the elm bark, perhaps 40-50 pretty picture wing Tephritid flies fluttering their wings in courtship, a couple of green Calliphorid flies, a muscid, one Delphina picta fly, a few Camponotus ant foragers, smaller flies like very miniature houseflies.
The elm was ten feet west of tagged tree #398. Like one happy bar scene all species were closely intermingling with no alarms. Tree disease probably producing an alcoholic slimy flux or fermented odor.
All along the walk, white Catalpa flowers rested on the sodden brown leaves from their tree marking a round pool of light white by which all the Catalpa can be found.

Tree Loop Trim

Funny day today. Windy and felt like storm was coming - all day. Pleasant overcast high 70's and 20 mph wind most of the day. I decided to the mow the Tree Loop with a weed whacker. Probably a good idea once a year to keep trail open. Now more or less clear path a meter wide all around the Loop with walls of uncut brome and Symphoricarpos buck brush waist high on either side. I took a walk in the early dark of evening around the Loop. No fireflies, hardly any mosquitoes. Insect populations have been way down this spring. May be early March warming (70s on the 7th) with good insect activity followed by cold hard freeze (18-20 on 26th). The wind today will rapidly draw down/ begin to dry up the standing pools of water in the west Woods. The Woods are green and full of vibrant growth but insect herbivores and the like, are not easily found.

Lemon Sweet Honeysuckle Morning in the Woods

Saturday morning 8 am I went to the NW Ponds entrance to the Woods. The abundant rains and humid atmosphere of the past week mixed with the blossoms of japanese honeysuckle to produce a lemon sweet fragrance at the entrance. All along Chautauqua the west fence boundary was coming into peak honeysuckle bloom.
A large poison ivy vine had fallen across the West trail.. large enough to block the trail. I cut the upper dead branches and pulled the crown away into the watery sedge. Upper branches killed, in last two years of heat and drought?
With my water boots on, I started to place the heavy stepping stones along the ankle deep flooded trail from the north. One or two Scincella little brown skinks were harboring in the stacked stones. 25 stones set.. others for another day. Need maybe another 75-100?
The Woods' NW entrance is a dense jungle of fresh healthy young growth.. and this is true through much of the Woods. I walked two thirds of the trails, clipping and cutting some of the many branches of trees (mostly box elder) growing across the path.. but the waist-high brome grass, abundant in many places, needs some herbivores. I left it uncut. Vague thoughts about the green weedy trails producing fine roots and below ground biomass, holding the soil against washing and locking in fresh photosynthates.
Ligustrum privet is in peak bloom in the upper Woods of the Tree Loop.. a heavier, sweet fragrance. Cornus rough-leaved dogwood is blooming white too, with its own muskier fragrance. One more Amur honeysuckle along the 2 Pecan trail, midway NW side. I'll cut and kill. Along the NW trail, the five or six catalpa are shedding their large white flowers. Some early light 'cotton' on the ground from the cottonwoods, not much yet.
The east pond depth is 3.10 feet and the Wash has ponds of water, largely filled all the way below the Elm Bridge, although no water flowing through Island Crossing.
No deer observed, although I did not walk the southern section. No turtles, although the vegetation is so thick I could easily have walked past several. Squirrels out playing along the Northern Rim trail. One hawk Cooper's (?) soaring above the squirrels.
Yellow flowering Lactuca(?) wild lettuce blooming 3-4 places. along trails.
Medium diameter coffee tree, tilted 30 degrees from vertical, SE east of E Pond. Looks like center has rot. Will it stay and survive? Trunk split at base.
Odd thing I've seen last year too: along the SW trail in a shaded section of all brown, sodden understory and ankle deep water, one elm has had hundreds of its green leaves plucked off and scattered on ground. No other tree like that in the vicinity. What gives? Like some canopy bird plucking leaves and dropping. May have been persimmon tree last year, in the same area.
One beautiful red admiral butterfly on the blooming privet as I was leaving the Woods.

Vines Monday morning in the Woods with Nathan.
Smilax bona-nox, S. tamnoides, Parthenocissus quinquefolia, Clematis, Cocculus, Toxicodendron, Lonicera japonica, Lonicera sempervirens, Ampelopsis, Vitis, Euonymus, milkweed (?) and others.
Lots of questions..what are the vines doing in there? what determines where they start? relationship to preferences of dispersal agents? how about vines hanging high up, down into open air..how did they get there? association of vine spp. with tree spp.? relationship to tree age? competition of vines spp. ? influence of bark characteristics (physical.. shreddy or solid; chemical.. allelochemicals?) relationship to soil moisture/ pH/ texture? role of inundation in limiting vines? ecology of vines in the Woods.

Afternoon headed for home by 3 before arrival of super powerful destructive tornado in Moore.

Snapper sighted E Pond

Over the weekend, we had some stormy weather Saturday night 0.58 inch rain; Sunday afternoon tornadoes on the east side of Norman. Sunday morning I went to the Woods via the SW Gate to see what winds and rain had done. There were a few new branches down, but nothing significant. The Woods were filled with green. There was too much water ponded up on the Main SW trail (by SW #2) so I walked east on the South Boundary trail to the Dune trail and crossed north from there across the water (slowly flowing out at Beaver Dam).  Two white-tailed deer dashed west in the woods just north of the Beaver Dam as I walked over the dune. Cottontail rabbits were feeding along Hackberry Alley. In the East Pond, I was delighted to see a medium sized snapper turtle at the east end. I watched it close up for several minutes before it moved off into deeper water. Mosquitoes were present but not bad.
Lots of red scarlet cup fungi in the central woods and some fresh Auricularia jelly fungus (on down pecan branch?) along the northern loop trail. Water was flowing in the Wash past Island Crossing and under Elm Bridge. Multiflora rose blossoms are just starting. Viburnum white flowers are gone. Grass is tall and thick. No Odonates spotted on either pond.

Green Woods full of Life

Great rains arrived: 1.33 inches May 8 with another fifth inch May 9. The Woods flooded westward and the water remains, filling the Main Wash through most of its length.

The Woods are their most alive now. Green is everywhere filling the understory, converting it to a dense jungle. It is a great time to be a deer or rabbit or other herbivore.. so much to eat. Fresh green grasses everywhere are waist high 100-150 cm through the Woods. This morning I heard white-tailed deer snorting repeatedly west of the Bur Oak Bridge but could not see .. so much green. They probably could hear but not see me too.
I was surprised by box turtles on the trails suddenly in front of me: near tree #113 top of first (western) rise of Ravine Trail; and on the NW trail at NW#2 stake (nice bright orange/red body markings); and by tree 27.1 the big dead green ash on the Tree Loop; and by a tilted green ash tree #351(?) along the SW Trail.
The floods moving across the northeastern Delta, have shifted eastward and cut a new channel, a little closer to the channel that existed before the big cottonwood fell.
The East Pond rose to 3.0 feet and 3 days later is back down to 2.86. The NW Pond was 2.4 today and covered with a light gray white skim (of some pollen?) No odonates observed. Mosquitoes are moderately abundant but not obnoxious biting yet.
Gossamer threads are becoming more common. I felt 9-10 touch my face near Tall Stump and more elsewhere along the trails.
A large dead hackberry top dropped across the NW trail pinning a small elm by the diatom pool. I cut and cleared the debris.. leaving the horizontal tilted elm some chance to live and grow.
Bird calls all through the Woods. Geese calling in flight unseen above.
I cut and killed one more Amur honeysuckle. It was hard to find east of the big walnut on the Tree Loop because its flowers were done. Blooms of multiflora rose are just getting going.
Bright red fungi, like scarlet cup, Sarcoscypha coccinea are common along the damp trails. Lamium pupureum has small discreet pale lavender blooms in bunches.
Big walnut #39 above Bur Oak Bridge does not look good. Green leaves mostly limited to lower stem leaves. Much of crown probably dead. I hope the tree survives. The other large walnut at east end of the Pipeline Trail looks worse.. still has one bunch of fresh green leaves on lower stem; but it looks like it will die this year.
I put on my wading boots and sloshed west upstream from the beaver dam with the chain saw, to clear a tangled blowdown blocking the SW trail; a big elm, killed by Ophistoma, Dutch elm disease.
In the ankle-deep clear water at the junction of the SW Trail and E-W Trail I watched a leech-like dytiscid diving beetle larva swimming. A water tiger, with long fierce jaws and a swollen belly. Hopefully it was eating every mosquito larva it could find.
Fresh blue paint in the NE quarter to brighten old blazes; but I did not clear the trails of general grassy and shrubby growth.