Warm Winds, Drying Woods

Strong, warm southerly drying winds have removed the last of the open pools of standing water and dried the month-old mucky soil. I went to the SW entrance at 3 pm to count butterflies for a couple of hours (71 in eleven spp.) The Woods had a distinct fine smell of drying wood that has been wet for a long time.. a rich tannin smell. The soil along the SW trail had gone from muck to crisp.
The water depth in the Wash had fallen to 9 " and the E Pond was at 1.80'.
The surface of the E Pond was filled with cotton from Populus. There was a good stream of black Polistes wasps coming to collect water (and maybe mud or wet cotton for nests(?)). A dragonfly perched on a high twig above the center of the pond.
In the pool above Island Crossing I watched three fish maybe 4-5" long feeding at the surface.
I walked along in the dry Wash where dozens of nymphalid butterflies - mostly hackberry emperors -were harboring out of the wind;  and where there was some remnant moisture in the soil.
Walking along the northern edge of the Delta, spider webs festooned the ash, persimmon and willow there. In the late afternoon sun it was remarkable.. like pictures on the web from just past flooding in Pakistan or in E. Texas with Tetragnathids. It is as though the flooding forced the spiders into the trees.
I cleared a largish walnut top broken across the NW trail east of Hackberry alley. Lots of partly formed walnuts there. Good sharp walnut smell from the broken stem and crushed leaves. I cut away two logs from a leaning dead cedar sinking on to the W Dune trail. Good fresh cedar smell there, although the tree had probably been dead for a decade or longer. The lindgren trap at the southern end of the NS trail  is harboring an active Polistes nest I need to remove. One large doe by the west end of the dune. Four large ticks and three tiny ones on me when I returned home.