Viburnum and Craneflies

 

  Nice Easter Sunday for a walk in the Woods.. softly overcast. I entered the SW Gate at 4. A recent very light shower produced the smell of fresh rain on warm soil - the first time this year for me.

Past Dragonfly Corner near 200 m, a moderate size elm killed by Ophiostoma elm disease had fallen across the trail in a tangle of branches. I broke and moved as much as I could but I need a saw to get the rest. Near the NE Gate a large wounded cimbicid elm sawfly along the trail was struggling with several ants. The sawfly was black with one orange antenna remaining and a bold white mark on its back. The water in the wash was diminished, but long full pools were black with organics and looked like they should be full of life. I saw one gerrid water strider. No turtles today although I checked both ponds and the wash. One small frog leapt into the water.

   The Viburnum rusty blackhaw are in good early flower now with cream white blossoms. The Elaeagnus autumn olive are still holding onto the end of their sweet fragrant bloom. All the live trees I checked along the tree loop now were producing leaves. The least, latest to develop, were the persimmon.. just barely breaking leaf buds, with some green showing. The soapberry were also just flushing new leaves.

  Two botany mysteries.. one a cluster of young 1 m high stems with new leaves like a walnut. Twenty stems in an area smaller than our home. It looked like a perennial invasive. The other is a common low herbaceous, simple, elliptical leaf with pinnate venation and a cluster of greenish purple blotches in the center of the leaf. There was a bright flowering cluster of daisies by the seep below the trail near the NW entrance.

  A small patch of the trail just west of the catalpas was curiously wet with dry forest leaf litter surrounding. I watched a dangling cut Ampelopsis fox grape vine dripping water from above.

  Beautiful woods with the bright green of new foliage everywhere today. Still 40% of the upper canopy tree limbs do not have their leaves but the understory shrub layer and sub-canopy trees (largely box elder) are well flushed.

   Several of the sugarberries had shriveled dead young leaves on twigs along the lower bole. It looked like young leaves had been killed by the sudden 28 F night we had a week ago. Upper branches and leaves on the same trees were fine. A few craneflies flying.. but not many insects. Two white-tailed deer at the SW gate as I was leaving. I stopped to say hello and sing to them for just a moment. They ran off but only 100 feet and stopped to browse again.

An explosion of life.

  In a small sunny glade just 50 m south from the NE Gate at noon today, I saw the first monarch butterfly in the Woods this year, taking nectar from the autumn olive which was in full sweet-smelling flower. There were 2 or 3 goatweed butterflies, a dark skipper, a small tiger swallowtail, two small least sulphurs. Almost every tree now has leaves starting. Even some of the older walnuts have first leaves emerging on small twigs out of the bole. There are small flies buzzing about and a large carpenter bee. Life is suddenly full on today. In the SW Woods, much of the trail is sodden with small pools of standing water. There are small midges or mosquitoes flying low over the soil.

  I placed another five stones along the soggy portion of the West trail.. and then heading south found Michael B. and Rachel F. recording data from pink-flagged trees.

It's Happened Again

It's happened again. I went to the Woods yesterday late in the day for a quiet walk and found that spring happened this weekend. It is on that one or two days when all the boxelder in the understory all unfurl their leaves.. coinciding with the flush of green young woodland grasses and Stellaria bedstraw on the forest floor and simultaneous with the flush of the leaves of Symphoricarpos deer bush in the shrub layer. It takes the Woods from the bare pending promise of early spring, to the full sprint of spring growth like a runner bursting from the blocks.
This evening out in the Woods there were 10-12 deer in a herd, more than I've seen this year. I stopped and sang to them in my normal voice as I usually do and they stood in place staring. Then I shifted to a lower register and most of them ran. No turtles this year so far. Both ponds are brimming full at 2.2 ' in depth or greater. The redbuds are out full and the tree loop is glorious, although the wild plum is now fading.