Early winter woods wander and discoveries

 I entered the Woods through the NW entrance Monday mid afternoon to enjoy some of the peace and quiet there. Just thirty feet into the Woods, I caught a glimpse of fur, thirty feet down slope, and stopped to investigate. It was a recently dead opossum resting on the fallen leaves. No sign of injury, fur coat unruffled, small black ears folded down and face composed, as if it had just gone to sleep. I remembered the recent discovery that mink are being infected with corona virus and rabbits in North America are being decimated by a new highly contagious rabbit hemorrhagic disease virus, and wondered if this could be a result of some spread of a virus into wild animal populations. So much about the lives of wild animals that we don't know. Beyond the first trail junction, the peaceful 'toe slope' pond, swamp wetland is well-filled (2.5 ft) with water rising from the water table, a good sign. The water was covered with winter pollen. I saw no sign of the small minnows or insects that live there.

  South of the big tree grove, I stopped to watch a brown wren hopping from branch to branch in a tangle of fallen branches beneath a big cottonwood. The bird seemed not to fly but to 'pop' or levitate, jumping from branch to branch, active and energetic. I wondered how they find enough food to sustain themselves on a late December day.

  I decided to walk most all the non-flooded trails and see what the Woods were like, on a mild afternoon in early winter. By the old Elm Bridge crossing, bunches of Allium wild chives were bright green. Early winter chickweed and unidentified crucifers were producing small green leaves, low against the soil. A flock of a dozen robins were foraging, hopping about, turning over dried leaves, looking for small snacks, invertebrates, worms, pill bugs, etc. Various patches of the Woods' dried leaf litter, have been vigorously turned by foraging armadillos, leaving characteristic trails like small vacuum cleaners pushing through the leaves.

Above beaver dam, the water was backed up in small shallow pools around the roots of the elms, not flowing. 

In the center of the Woods, a quiet piece of soft dried leaves looked inviting and I laid down for a nap. Not many places now where you can do that and listen to robins foraging around you. 

Fifteen minutes later, opening my eyes, I looked at the forest of trees, many bent or broken, trumps snapped, major limbs lost. I enjoyed thinking about the multidimensional kaleidoscope of green leaves that standing living stems will produce in the spring. Their above-ground stems, trunks, and branches have been severely damaged, but the roots below matter the most for longevity. They will produce the new crop of leaves to sustain rapid new growth in the coming April.

Time to head home. I stopped again to admire the huge structure and massive bulk of the summer 2020 fallen cottonwood. Then made my way out of the Woods.

 

Destruction and Creation in Oliver's Woods.

The October 27, 2020 ice storm in Norman OK was the most intense disturbance the Woods has experienced since 2007. Massive trees were toppled or lost large branches, weighing tons. Branches or trunks of large cottonwoods or pecans smashed smaller hackberry (most common), red elms, box elders, coffee trees, chittamwood, wild plums, blackhaw and other species growing below.

Tangles of debris changed the Woods. Leaves that still are on broken branches, make shelter for warm-blooded birds, raccoons, squirrels, opossums, rabbits, bobcats, white-tailed deer, and other vertebrates. Green leaves stripped to the ground in the storm, provided an unusual boost of nutrients available for soil microorganisms, herbivorous mites, springtails, and their predators. Large limbs or small branches pressed to the ground gave a burst of new resources for fast-colonizing fungi and the beetles and arthropods that depend on the fungi. Armadillos will find more of these invertebrates as they forage through dried leaves.

In the first half of the 20th century, sections of the central and southwestern Woods were horse pasture, with scattered pecans, bur oaks, walnuts, green ash and cottonwoods. The sparse, large pecans and fast-growing cottonwoods became the dominant trees in the over story. When the ice came, these trees were the most exposed. The ice added hundreds of pounds at the ends of large branches sixty or seventy feet up, that already weighed hundreds of pounds. When large canopy branches or trunks crashed down, they fell on top of younger understory trees, plus Smilax greenbrier, Ampelopsis and Vitis wild grape, Cocculus moonseed vines, Ligustrum privet and Elaeagnus autumn olive shrubs and others.

The top of some massive cottonwood trunks, laying on their sides, are eight feet up, new elevated highway corridors for squirrels, mice, raccoons, and other vertebrates through the Woods. They provide architectural complexity and enrich the structure of the Woods habitat. Food for scolytine bark beetles, cerambycid longhorn beetles, buprestid jewel beetles and other insects that bore through the bark and introduce decay fungi. Populations of bark beetles and others will increase rapidly for the next few years in the Woods. Food for woodpeckers hunting for beetles.  New habitat for millipedes, snails, centipedes, ground beetles and isopod pillbugs or roly-polys where fallen branches are in contact with the wet soil. Large decaying logs will make homes for warm-blooded vertebrates living in their hollows. Other downed trunks such as walnut will resist decay and insects and last for many years or decades, providing long lasting structure and habitat.

Wednesday I went to the Woods twice to clear trails and to observe.  The roaring NW wind was whipping along Chautauqua past the NW entrance. Stepping into the Woods, was like stepping into a church. Within 30 feet it was almost still. The wind was blocked by the upper slope and the surrounding trees. Cardinals, robins and other woodland birds filled the under story, sheltered from the storm, shaking the tree tops thirty or forty feet above them. I would like to know what the resident birds in the Woods know, where the best shelter is, near water and winter berries. I would like to know what the resident white-tailed deer know, where to go when cold is coming. At four o'clock there was a herd of a half-dozen deer at the north end of Hackberry Alley, moving southeast.

The Woods have seen a loss in abundance of wildlife with construction years ago of the new city transfer station, blocking the movement of wildlife into the Woods from the wild land along the Canadian River. The October ice storm re-introduced chaos, complexity and diversity.

A Hard Day

 

I returned to the Woods on Monday morning planning to clear more of the trails with my chainsaw from the broken trees left by the October ice storm. I began at the SW Gate and encountered a lot of heavy branches down from the big bur oaks there and hackberry. After a few hours of work with the saw and hauling branches I had worked to a location midway along the south border fence behind the transfer station. A sudden violent movement 50 feet away along the fence line caught my eye.

A white tailed doe was caught in the fence with one foot tangled in wire up at 5 feet. Who knows how long she had been caught there. Must have tried to jump the fence.

I immediately made my way out to the car and drove to the Animal Shelter on Jenkins. They answered when I rang the bell and I and described the situation. One of the officers grabbed some big wire cutters and drove his truck back to the SW gate. We walked to the deer and he approached it carefully, as it was struggling. He cut the fence and the deer immediately 'ran' 20-30 feet, but using only its front legs. The officer watched it for a while. He was hoping for her to get her back legs back under her. He was joined after ten minutes by another officer. The doe could not walk (or survive) and they told me they would euthanize her. I left and drove to the Tree Loop to work there. I heard the two shots at 1 o'clock.

I was quietly sad thinking about the life of that wonderful creature until I quit and left the Woods.

Lots of thoughts floated through my head but I was struck by its struggle to live.

 

Disturbance and Return

 The October ice storm was the most severe disturbance of Oliver's Woods since the December 2007 ice storm. I returned to the Woods this morning to see the aftermath. The autumn ice and 2-3 strong windstorms subsequently, brought down numerous very large upper main stems of trees. Pecans were particularly impacted. I entered the Woods via the NW Entrance. It took some work with a chainsaw to clear heavy, tangled branches blocking the entrance. I also filled a trash bag with contents of an earlier trash bag containing spent personal protective gear, disposable medical gloves, styrofoam cups, plastic water bottles and such, probably stolen by dogs or coyotes, ripped open and scattered there. Good to have that gone. 

  I carried the saw to the massive cottonwood - one of the three largest in the Woods, that had fallen this summer and blocked the main NW Trail. The alternate path I earlier had cleared bypassing the blockage this autumn, was itself now blocked by a tangle of debris beneath a huge upper trunk sheered off a pecan, one of the largest pecans in the Woods. I saw that a simple reroute of the trail could return to the original trail path with some clearing of large diameter cottonwood branches and other tangled debris. After a few hours I had cleared and reopened the NW Trail past the NW Pond, past the fallen cottonwood, to East Pond and east to Hackberry Alley and out the North Trail. Lots of pulling and hauling of branches.  The new return to the old trail is an improvement because it now goes to and along the massive, partly elevated fallen cottonwood. This is a sight to ponder and absorb.

  With a half day of work, I cleared trails in the NW section. I need to do the same from the NE Gate through the Tree Loop and eastern side of the Woods; and from the SW Gate and the southern end of the Woods. If I ended my efforts to maintain the foot paths, the Woods would close itself off into the wild, mostly inaccessible tangle,  that it was naturally twenty years ago when I first walked there.

After the ice

 October 26-28 central Oklahoma experienced an early ice storm. Leaves had not fallen from deciduous trees and the ice weight they accumulated was destructive. I took a walk in the Woods this morning, beginning on the NE Tree Loop. There were some branches and trees down, but not too bad. The Tree Loop is in a younger section of forest and the trees there did not accumulate as much destructive ice.

I continued west along the East West trail and encountered more damage. Pecan trees have been damaged the worst; a combination of lots of leaves and relatively weak wood. Marvelous vibrant healthy lichens on the upper canopy fallen branches.  Black and red oaks have survived relatively well. Post oaks and bur oaks have had more damage. I will need to walk all the trails with a saw, and clear the paths.

There is water standing (very slowly flowing) at Island Crossing and Elm Bridge and Beaver Dam. East Pond has been refilled to 2.5 ft depth. Norman area and the Woods had 4.5 inches of rain after a very dry autumn and intensifying drought conditions. This storm will give deep-rooted trees a long drink before the winter. More rain expected next week, although dry La Nina conditions are expected to prevail this winter. 

Wind and weather have stripped many, or most, or almost all of the leaves from tall elms and other exposed trees, although the Woods' main tree canopy is still full.

This unusual storm stripped and dropped many green leaves. I wonder what effect this might have on the soil fauna, earthworms, collembola spring tails. Will  they have a boom with the increase in rich resources? What about fungi?

Summer and storms

   Friday- Sunday July 10-12 there were two strong summer storms in Norman OK with some rain and powerful 70 mph winds. Wednesday the 15th I returned to the Woods to see how it had fared. I entered at 10 AM through the SW Gate and walked north along the West Trail. This section of the Woods has been continuously underwater for more than a half year, since sometime autumn 2019 and I had not seen any of the changes during the past half year or more. With the standing water completely gone, patches of sedges are thriving, growing thick 3-4 feet high. On the bare forest floor, until recently underwater, there were thousands of two inch high young trees, green ash, persimmon, sugar berry and others, opening their cotyledons and starting a race to grow as much as possible before winter. There were a number of broken tops of green ash and sugar berry and some trees down, but the trails, in most cases, are not impacted. The Carpenter cottonwood is down and I will need to reroute some of the NW trail. The wetland west of the NW pond is mostly, but not all dry. The NW pond is still substantial and has about a foot of water depth remaining. The same is true for the East Pond.
  The Woods was quiet, few flying insects, no mosquitoes. I did not notice late summer flowers in bloom. It felt like a summer hiatus for the Woods. Birds were quiet.
 This may be the time when vigorous deciduous trees can secure growth they've produced this year. Earlier they've invested in growth of new shoots and leaves, new diameter growth, a new crop of seeds. The soil still has enough water at depth so that middle-aged leaves can continue photosynthesis and replenish stores of starch in the roots, enough to make it through droughts, long cold winters or other challenges, and still have carbohydrate fuel to produce the annual burst of spring growth. Growth of the roots of trees, herbs and shrubs along the trail also helps build soil health, provide fine roots and new fuel for nematodes and a thousand other species of micro-invertebrate and microbial symbionts.
  I checked on the one patch of oriental bittersweet I've been attempting to eradicate, and was happy to only find a couple dozen growing sprigs of Celastrus. I pulled up all that I found and felt like I was slowly winning the battle. I know it is not done.
  I saw just one white-tail running away northwest as I walked along Hackberry Alley.
  There was a lot of standing water above the old location of Elm Bridge, a good resource for raccoons, opossums, bathing birds, bees, and all the other creatures in the Woods.
  Along the Main SW trail, in patches for 300 meters above the (dry) beaver dam, there was again the odd, light yellow fine sand laying in fresh lines on top of the darker dry organic soil. I suspect this is sand that has been blown from the Canadian River on prevailing SW winds; but it could also have been deposited from the large Saharan dust storm that moved over Oklahoma in the last three days of June, or the dust storm from Colorado, Kansas and western Oklahoma during the first week of June. It would be interesting to know if an elemental analysis could decipher which of these sources was most significant.
 

Fallen giant

There are thousands and thousands of trees in Oliver's Woods. One of the three greatest has fallen.
The third largest cottonwood in Oliver's Woods. I have thought of this as the 'Carpenter Cottonwood' after Charles Carpenter who worked all around this tree and the surrounding ravines cut into the upper terrace, documenting the decades-long lives of the box turtles that live in Oliver's Woods. Carpenter and his students established a grid in Oliver's Woods for their observations with lasting steel posts each 4 foot long and one inch diameter. Sixty-five years later, there are a dozen of these posts, of the original three or four dozen, that remain in place, revealing the old grid. One of these posts was within a meter of this cottonwood and the tree now lies above it, the post fully visible.
I've walked by this dominant tree more than a thousand times in the past fifteen years and always marveled at the diameter of its central trunk, the height and spread of its canopy and the heavy massiveness of its limbs. I've noticed when its leaves begin to yellow and fall and when the first new leaves of spring arrive again.
For the last five years, the tree has been tilted strongly to the east with a halo of soil lifted around the roots. Almost unimaginable weight of the massive tree has been supported by the remaining roots, through winter ice storms, spring-summer near-tornadoes that knocked over smaller pecan and coffee trees on the other side of the Woods. Providing a life, a home, or a perch for woodpeckers, hawks, owls, squirrels, countless species of beetles and other insects.
Now the tree is down and has left a gaping hole in the forest, a light gap which will attract basking butterflies in the early spring and through the warm season. The gap will quickly fill with fast growing shoots of new trees taking their opportunity to reach for the light. The trunks of the old tree will last for a decade or more and serve as a home to longhorn and jewel beetles, weevils and fungus beetles, polypore fungi, tiny ants, agile basking robber flies and a whole community from the Woods.
 

High Cotton

Returned to the summer Woods today. After good spring rains in mid May, it has been warm and every species of green plant, tree and shrub is in full growth mode. Healthy green everywhere. The Woods 'are in high cotton'. The big female cottonwood trees have released thousands, or millions of seeds accompanied with the white fluff, seed hairs, that makes them drift on the wind, to new ground. With warmer weather, orb-weaver spiders have been busy spinning silk and their webs glisten in the light with captured cotton from the trees.

The NW pond was looking good. One red-eared slider basking on a log on the far side watched, was on alert as I walked by, but did not tumble to safety in the water.
The East pond had declined a little. There were small minnows foraging in the muddy water. On the wet soil around the NE corner there were small bits of bright red.. small fungi, Sarcoscypha or Peziza.

I saw one deer leaping away from me, heading south along Hackberry Alley. Beaver Dam was dry. The wetland bottom area above the dam had been continuously under inches of water for months. Now its surface is dry although still mucky wet beneath. Bright green cotyledons are scattered growing on the newly available seed bed. Water still filled the Wash from Island Crossing to Elm Bridge.

Across the sand dune, I stopped to pull away a couple of invasive  Amur honeysuckle Lonicera maackii stumps regrowing stems after I cut them back last year. I spent some time at the patch of invasive oriental bittersweet, Celastrus I have been fighting. Pulled another 50 stems.. mostly all small. I suspect there were at least another 20, I might have found if I worked another hour.
I visited the patch of Hedera english ivy I've been working to eradicate and found a few more green leaves but it is scarce now.

Cardinals were calling, one re-tailed hawk was crying as it circled above, the brrrr of one cicada sounded above the canopy - sound of summer.

I cleared (parts of) three big trees blocking trails and walked 80% of the trails checking for problems.

Rich and Green

Forest was deep, green and rich as I returned this May morning.
I stepped in and was immersed in Olivers Woods at its most luxuriant best. It has been weeks I've been away. Some big storms have brought down 4-5 medium size trees I will need the chain saw to clear off the trails.
Recent good 1.2 inch rain has the NW pond filled to 2.55 feet depth and a little blue heron(?) flying away as I entered the green. At 11:30 west side of the NW Pond a barred owl called. I answered. It answered me and then a second (closer) barred owl replied. Don't know why they were calling (or even awake) at that hour. Maybe spring mating season? I wandered towards the E Pond and passed by the beautiful catalpa blossoms strewn on the ground. The air was light with the sweet fragrance.,, Japanese honeysuckle, Ligustrum privet, and catalpa fruity, light, floral delicious fragrance.
  I walked down to the beaver dam and watched reasonable flow draining the Woods.
Returning north I came back to my main task: pulling and cutting invasive oriental bittersweet. I have spent may hours in this smallish spot in 2019 grubbing out bittersweet and today was my first good session in 2020. Many, many spouts of bittersweet.. but no big vines. I think I got the big ones last year. It will take another 2-3 years to clear this patch with continuing effort. Maybe never complete.
  As I set to work there, I found first box turtle of the spring. Did not disturb. After 45 minutes I had done enough and I headed on west.   Two more trees down across the East West trail. Water flowing at a moderate rate at beaver dam, rich tea-colored brown. The Tree Loop looked in good shape. On cream white blooms of privet, orange painted lady nymphalid butterflies. At Island Crossing I disturbed a pretty garter snake basking on a sunny bank, gold and brown. It zoomed into the flowing water and I watched it swim south for 50 feet or more.
  This is the Saturday of OU Graduation weekend. Graduates celebrating and Oliver's Woods is full of life.. all at a time of corona virus death and illness. The lush green along the trailside Symphoricapos deer brush and grasses, young boxelder and soapberry trees 3 feet tall, vines of multiflora rose and greenbrier I trimmed but left to grow so their roots could fill the ground beneath the narrow trail and hold the soil in place. Beautiful rich morning. The Woods are becoming lost to people again. No students, no classes, disturbing the wildlife along the trails. Just the forest growing.

Snapping turtles and violets

Saturday morning March 29 I went to the Woods to see what changes the spring has brought. Peaceful beautiful morning. All the boxelder are flushing new leaves and there was new green everywhere. I stopped at the East Pond and watched ripples give rise to a nice massive snapping turtle snout. I stood and watched with binoculars as it stared in my direction for 3-4 minutes. I imagined it with vision blurred with dripping water trying to make out if the thing it could see standing along the shore represented a threat. The turtle was foraging underwater along the shallow eastern shore where there are usually dozens of Gambusia. I noticed there were no /few Gambusia and wondered if that was the turtle's lunch.
I walked down towards the beaver dam and stopped at the site where I have been fighting the invasive oriental bittersweet. After a year of visiting destruction on the plant in a 30 m x 30 m area, pulling and cutting and treating every stem and root I could find.. and feeling pretty good about my success; it was disheartening to see more than 50 new sprouts. All were less than knee high but clearly I am going to have to keep after the stuff for another year or two. I need to check on the invasive Amur Honeysuckle stumps and see if they are dead, or resprouting as well. And the one site with exotic English ivy seems well on its way to being controlled.. but I know there are a few remains still there.
Stepping across Island Crossing there were dozens of pretty Viola sororia purple violets..just there.
The trees along the Tree Tutorial Loop are looking good. Always fun to see the new smallest leaves of post oaks and pin oaks and all the trees just beginning to expand.

Every year I enjoy looking for the first new green things in the Woods.

Leap Day, March 1 & 2 the Woods were beautiful and peaceful,  warm mild weekend weather. 77 F Sunday at 3 PM.
I worked along the quarter mile Tree Tutorial loop in the NE Woods, renewing the numbered tags on the 120 trees of 28 species identified there. Pecan, oak, walnut, hickory, ash, redbud, elm, cottonwood, juniper, wild plum, sugarberry, mulberry, haw, chittamwood, black locust, dogwood, soapberry, box elder, more. The familiar names are a comfort to pronounce and remember.

Elm flowers were opening. Bradford pear flower buds were swelling almost open. The Woods are on the cusp of waking up.
   On the forest floor, Allium wild onions are rampant in the SE quarter, lots of young Stellaria chickweed leaves everywhere, some (not as much) green Galium bedstraw and a few small Veronica flowers in the cottonwoods.  Rabbits will be happy and well fed after the dry rough food of winter. A few Cardamine toothwort flowers by the beaver dam with one lone whirligig beetle circling in the small pool there. I looked for invasive oriental bittersweet leaves at the one location where I've been fighting it but did not find yet (glad).  I enjoyed the 4 beat of woodpecker there chiseling bark for a snack and drumming trees for territory. There were even a few insects flying, a bright red admiral butterfly suddenly landing at my feet, a dark Polistes wasp exploring cottonwood bark looking for lunch, and one old coreid leaf-footed bug basking in warm sun on a dead sycamore leaf. I wondered if it was attracted to the soft tanned smell of the dried old leaf remembering earlier days, or attracted to the remnant sycamore chemicals and dreamed of the fresh leaves coming in the spring.

The lower Woods water table is full and high. Good because I think the small beginnings of a La Nina are whispering the chance of a drier spring. Standing water there at the start of the growing season should power good growth at an important time for the trees. The ponds were up near full, 2.56 ft for the NW Pond and 2.42 for the East.

Through binoculars I watched a young red-tail hawk circling over me as he watched me from his height.  There were also a pair of turkey vultures soaring over me, a big flock of robins enjoying the area around the E. pond. Cardinals exploring the multiflora rose and leopard frogs chuckling at the end of the day around the NW pond.

The future Woods

One o'clock mid winter afternoon walk in the Woods. Abnormally warm 65F with serious cold winter storm coming within 48 hours. I entered via the NE Gate, Tree trail and Pipeline trail. The Woods were unusually quiet, no birds. I wonder if they know the storm is coming (likely snow and ice Saturday) and they have mostly moved south or gone elsewhere to find shelter. Last week there were hundreds of robins. Today, none. I walked to the East Pond and noticed scores of small ring ripples from the small fish (all Gambusia?) surfacing. Last two weeks I have twice observed the foraging of a hidden creature, likely a snapping turtle or a red-eared slider - actively foraging on the bottom and sending up a steady volume of bubbles, methane gas from the anoxic or low oxygen decomposition there. The pond today did not have the bubbles, but was one half covered with the light oil sheen of anoxic decomposition.
  I returned to the site of my battle with the oriental bittersweet invader and was happy to not see any green shoots. I am sure that battle is not over yet.. but it definitely is heading in the right direction.
  I kept thinking as I walked today that this was/ is a degraded Woods. Years ago when I first walked here there were fox, common raccoons, rare bobcats, skunks, rabbits (common), owls (common), coyotes, armadillos, white tail deer, wood rats, snapper turtles (unusual) and box turtles (relatively common).
Now these are uncommon or gone. I think the vital link to the wilder lands along the Canadian River has been cut by the construction of the city trash station.
  The Woods are still there. The soil will still be rich in an infinity of microbes and small micro-arthropods, mites, pauropods, symphyla and larger springtails, millipedes, centipedes, beetles etc.
The trees are there, 30 species, some of the largest cottonwoods, green ash, pecans and walnuts in the county.. their roots and their accompanying mycorrhizae. Fungi, mushrooms and lichens are still there. Snails, different ant species and other insects. Succession, competition, disturbance, recovery, mutualisms. They all continue. But the Woods I knew have been altered badly. What remains is senile.
  Invasive species such as bittersweet, Japanese honeysuckle, privet and autumn olive are having a great impact and filling in the best places to grow. The English ivy Hedera I battled years ago is making a 'come-back' in the same place. I cut some more ivy stems today and will try to uproot and cut more ivy.
  These senile Woods may be a superior model for study of our natural earth going forward. We have destroyed or disrupted much of the rich earth we lived with.. but vital processes will continue. Living things will continue. It may be time to start paying attention to this new disrupted world to understand our future.