September return to the Woods.

Nice 'cold front' rolled through and dropped temps to 80's and low 90's F.
I decided to catch up on deferred trail maintenance and started about 9 am at the SW Gate. I carried paint to refresh all the trail blazes. By 2 o'clock I'd finished walking 90% of all the trails. I cleared branches and fallen tops all along the way and did the blue blazes. Good to have the fresh paint for late evening navigation after sunset. More visible in low light or near darkness.
By the NW Pond I spotted one box turtle near the jct with the Ravine Trail. There was an immature great blue heron looking for lunch standing on the west side of the pond. Did not fly for several minutes with me watching. There were two groups of white tailed deer: three west of the beaver dam running north into the Woods; and one group of two west of the Wash near Island crossing. The pool above Island Crossing had dried to mud. There was still a pool of very muddy water in the Wash by the big mimosa tree; one buck ran from there as I approached. Mosquitoes not bad, a little annoying along the West Trail.
The sedges were all flattened along the Big Tree Grove trail by the leaning willow. It looked like this was where the deer were sleeping. Big green ash tree # 506 still has sweet fermenting flux down the trunk, today with a dozen green calliphorids, several Camponotus carpenter ants and one Polistes wasp.
I did not do the Northern Rim or the Ravine Trail. Another day..
Approaching the SW Gate as I was leaving, the air was perfumed with good sweet smell of Clematis, in full bloom along the edge of the Woods.
Only spotted two seed ticks when I got home and showered.

Hottest 2013 Day in the Woods

Up to 100 F this afternoon. I drove the southern service road eastward from the transfer station and stopped at the end of the N-S trail by Heather's solar cell. The giant ragweed there is now 7-8 feet high. I pushed open a path from the hot grassy road to the shaded forest. The ragweed shed its loads of yellow pollen from each cupped flower as I pushed the tall stems aside and pressed them down. The air was minty with fragrant plant aromas until abruptly stepping into the dry open basin shaded by the willows. Large black carpenter ants were busy there along a dead stub of one prostrate big willow. North there were some small branches and debris across the trail; but mostly the trail was in good shape despite my absence. At the EW trail jct someone (squirrel?) had been eating green pecans and their bright white-yellow fragments were littering the trail. Lots of dried curled dead leaves are down.. shed during the heat of the past two weeks. But these represent surely less than 5 % of the leaves that will come down this year.
Up to Barney Jct and NW to Tall Stump and then to the East Pond. It was mostly dry but still held 0.86 ft of water by the gauge. From there south through the Big Tree grove to the Main SW Trail. Passing the big cottonwood (#200) and a little farther south a big leaning green ash and a sudden alcoholic sweet smell of a tree wound with flux. Twenty feet up the tree a foot long old wound and flux streak extending to the ground was attracting a busy group of nymphalids (mostly hackberry emperors).. some green bottle Lucilla calliphorids and a few others.
Leaving the Woods I took the W. Dune trail and was impressed again at the Cnidoscolus bull nettle flourishing there above the Opuntia.
I stopped to refresh several blue paint blazes on my way out.

Late August Hot Afternoon

Near the end of August and it is hot.. but so much better than the previous two summers. At 2 PM I took a brief walk in the Woods via the NE Gate down to the Wash and west to Fence Corner. The mosquitoes were there, but not overwhelming. They are less active in the heat of the day.. 91 F.
The Wash had dried down to a series of disconnected pools. Along the trail, the dark green leaves of Elephantopus are encroaching on the path. A few are beginning to show their light lavender flowers. The elliptical leaves and knee-high flowering stalk of Polygonum virginianum are more abundant. I imagine it has been a good season of growth for the trees - abundant summer rain and soil moisture with lots of warm sunny days to produce photosynthate. Even small trees (Gymnocladus) I had written off as dead along the Tree Loop have sprouted vigorous displays of stump-sprouted leaves.

Back to the Washed Woods

This Saturday morning I went for an early foray to the NE Gate. The morning was mild low 70's and humid after the intense one inch rain Friday morning in the hours between midnight and sunrise. The Woods have been washed again with flood water rushing across much of the area and sweeping away leaf litter, small twigs, branches, medium size logs and some topsoil.  Big change in ecology of soil development, decomposition & litter organisms. It had been hot and fairly dry for the previous few weeks and East Pond stood at 2.17 feet. NW Pond was at 2.2. There was a small run of water stretching upstream from the beaver dam.. maybe 50 m. and Island Crossing a 30 cm wide stream not moving.
At the NW Pond I searched for turtles but found none. I did see a beautiful view of a pileated woodpecker and listened to wren scolding, kingfisher calling, geese flying overhead and a variety of other bird calls.
Walnuts are beginning to drop a few of their green, full-sized nuts and few premature yellow leaves are coming down from elm, catalpa and cottonwood. (99.9% of canopy still full green.) Pecans are aborting(?) and dropping a few under-sized nuts. The Hibiscus by the NW pond has many full big white flowers in bloom on the several shrubs on the southeast and western sides. Rough-leaved dogwood and Viburnum both have large green berries almost full grown.
Cicadas are calling and I found one dead on  the NE trail by the Wash. The spiders are changing now with many more of the Gasteracantha thorn-back orbweb weavers. Mosquitoes are super abundant. Interesting to see where they gather.. which small patches of sunlight or shade attract them. Found five Nicrophorus burying beetles in Pipeline trail trap.
Commelinia dayflower blooming and Euonymus and common small white flowers up a 75 cm tall thin stalk (sp?)
I returned with the saw and cleared elm top in big blowdown plus several other vines etc. blocking trails... also two more mimosa - cut and treated with roundup.  One white-tailed buck snorted and ran west down from the Tree Loop.

100% Humidity

Went to the Woods, the SW Gate, at 6 pm with a saw to clear the tangle of the dead cedar and the greenbrier blocking the West Dune trail. 91F and maximum humidity. The smells in the woods were of rot.. and not the most pleasant. Just completed the second wettest July on record for Norman, about 10 inches of rainfall. The floods in the W and SW corner of the Woods had largely cleared, with the warmth of the past week; but there are still some standing pools in scattered low places through the Woods. Warmth and water.. more than tropical. It is such a contrast to summers of the past few years.
The Main SW trail was largely dried near the Grandfather cottonwood; but the soil was heavy damp and remnant small pools were there. Still very few insects.. a few more mosquitoes. Here the first week of August I find myself saying the diversity of insects will be back, won't they?

The Weight of a Tree

Early Sunday morning I went to the NE Gate of the Woods and hiked in to the big blowdown by the Wash. I cleared away tangled broken branches of elm, oak, hackberry and pecan to get to the double trunked big pecan resting across the trail. This was a mature tree with a 15 inch and 20 inch diameter trunks at 30 feet up the bole and a full crown of green leaves 30 feet further along the bole. It had blown down two years ago but maintained enough root contact to keep a green crown growing. It was suspended five feet above the trail so I had left it and just ducked under each time I passed by. Now it had fallen further to block the trail and I reluctantly decided to cut a section to restore the trail route.
The saw was reasonably sharp but it was still dicey cutting once, twice, three times, trying to get through and not knowing how the heavy tree would turn, jump, spring etc.
The weight of a full tree like this is just enormous. I paused and thought how remarkable that all the large trees around me routinely support tons of weight.. sometimes tilted, or extending away from the main trunk as large heavy branches.
As I was leaving, I noticed a large tall Albizzia mimosa, probably the parent tree of the two I had cut earlier this summer along the Creekside Trail. It was in flower and had new hanging seed pods. I cut it and will watch to see that it does not survive. Beautiful invasive tree.

Washed Woods

Beautiful damp Saturday morning. Twenty four hours ago, Norman was in a flash flood 4 inch downpour.. in addition to the 4 plus inches of rain that fell ten days previous, unusual for July.. but great to keep the trees and greenery thriving. At 8 AM I entered the SW Gate. There was quite a pile of woody debris, bark and twigs washed up there, blocking the gate. The water had drained just to the first 50 m post north.  The Woods north, west and east of there was flooded ankle deep. I took the Big Log trail and found a box turtle just past the Big Log. It had found a small golf ball-sized depression and looked like it was having a drink.
There are some large trees down and blocking trails: north side of W Dune trail (old cedar and greenbrier), creekside lower end of NE Trail at big blowdown, and old pear tree at NE Gate entrance. There will be a good bit of trail clean up needed from various trees or branches down and flotsam debris.
I saw two rabbits flitting through the brush and one spotted fawn north of the W Dune trail north end. A few mosquitoes buzzed me but just a handful. I heard a flicker calling, saw robins in the lower Woods and watched a flock of seven geese fly over the W. Pond. The animals of the Woods are probably still recovering from the pummeling rains. I saw a dozen or so pale thin earthworms drowned in pools of light tea-colored water along the SW trail. I still don't know if they are native or introduced species. Along many of the trails the big orange Araneus had spun large webs, perfect in the morning light. Three or four small (Gambusia?) fish were swimming in the pool above Elm Bridge. In several places, polypores have produced large white hard conks on fallen logs and I saw two or three big batches of Auricularia jelly fungi full fleshed after the rain.
All through the lower Woods, much of the ground has been washed bare, stripped of leaf litter. The trails served as channels where grasses are bent in the direction of the flow. Even the Northern Loop trail was washed..  from the volume and rate of the precipitation, not flooding from the Wash. The East Pond was 3.3 feet and turbid muddy brown. The West Pond was 2.62 feet. I searched for snapping turtles sunning on a log but did not see any. No odonates flying. The post in the Wash washed away. I recovered only the depth gauge. At Island Crossing, I was impressed to see the water depth had overtopped the 2 m tall steel pipe that marks the trail. The water was flowing rapidly out at the Beaver Dam, but without significant wind, much of inundated area will remain flooded for a few weeks, even with warm early August high temperatures.