Peak Plum

Woods this afternoon is soft, full beginning spring.
In the upper Woods, especially the northwest corner, the native Chickasaw plum and naturalized Bradford Pear are full of blossom. Bright white for the pear. White to pink and light brown for the plum. Red buds' purple flowers are mixed among the dark green juniper.
The lower Woods after weeks of dry winds (a very dry March) have finally lost almost all of the standing water from the earlier rains. The upper Woods have been so dry that bare soil along the trails was cracking. The lower Main SW trail kept water along its length, even with the weeks of dry wind. Today the surface of the Main SW trail was in parts wet enough to cling to shoes; but there was no standing water anywhere along its length except small depressions along the side of trail. The soft soil/mud along the main trail was full of tracks of animals. raccoon, opossum, skunk, coyote, deer; others too. I need Nic C. to help me read.
I met Irish and discussed the limits of wood cutting and the value of leaving down wood on the ground to rot in the preserve.
At the SW Gate, just into the Woods I stood and looked up to the canopy. Half of the trees had opened their buds and were beginning to put life into their new leaves. The rest will soon. A magic time of renewing life. Cornus dogwood had tiny scimitars of green leaves beginning. Ligustrum privet was well along with new small rounded leaves. Elaeagnus autumn olive new silvery green leaves were flushed and already new blossoms were beginning to be produced.. not open yet.
Hovering around the small remaining pools of standing water there were some small aggregations of non-biting male mosquitoes that flew up as I passed by. The more pesky biting females will be emerging soon unless the coming rainstorm washes them away.
 I saw two purple violets along the Western Loop of the Tree Loop, There was Dentaria/Cardamine pepper grass with its small white flowers. The Wash still had abundant water, mostly full, although not flowing.
I walked much of the southern lower Woods to check for branches down in the blowing winds of the past fortnight. There was a fair amount, but all small branches (except for the large dead cedar I cleared last week from blocking the Western Loop). I thought about how quickly the Woods will revert to a wilder, less easily navigated version of itself when I am gone from here. The wildlife will be happier, no doubt, with less human traffic.
One bumble bee passing through, happy to have pollen and nectar from plum and pear again, after the long winter.

Craneflies - Woods are at the Brink of Spring

Late afternoon walk into the Woods from the NW entrance. The northwest pond is well up (over 2.4 ft. depth). Fine spring afternoon, mid 60's F. After this past Tuesday's windy weather, there were many small branches down across the trails.. mostly finger diameter.. nothing big. I saw no turtles basking and no deer, although the tracks of the deer and foraging tracks of armadillos were evident everywhere.
The Woods are just on the brink of breaking out with spring. The warm days and wet soil will bring out a good healthy leaf flush. In two weeks the light and the aspect of the Woods will begin to be very different. This week the Elaeagnus autumn olive shrubs have all broken leaf buds and have early small elliptical green leaves peaking out all over. Same for the few scattered Euonymus winterberry shrubs.
The East pond is also still well up (>2.2 ft depth).
As I was leaving the Woods via the NW exit, I saw large dancing amber winged insects.. curious what they were. The size of scorpionflies.. several of them all dancing around the base of the large pecan and nearby smaller trees. After a moment I realized I was watching large craneflies. Beautiful amber wings and perpetual bouncing dance flight. Cool. A few times before I have seen hundreds or thousands emerging from the wetlands in the western Woods. Good to see them again. Good to see spring coming in.

Spring Peepers a Woodpecker and the first Turtle

Sunday I walked in to the Woods via the NW Pond, still well-filled. There on the far side, basking in the spring sunshine (and 60 F temp) was the first turtle of the year. Covered in mud, resting on a floating log. Could have been a red-eared slider, but it was kind of large and thick for that. Hope to see it again with binocs. I walked the Ravine Trail refreshing the red dots. On the east side at the big pecans south of break in the levee there was a surprising sight. A small beautiful woodpecker, black and white back, red head lay on the trail. Not sure why it had died, but it was beautiful. I
I stopped at the Main SW trail gate and dotted some yellow blazes as far as possible without getting feet wet in the receding but still pooled water along the trail.
Driving back north on Chautauqua, I heard the magic sound of spring peepers. Abundant in the western roadside ditch.

Sky Silver a Great Blue Heron and Endless Mysteries

Out to the Woods at 10, before the noon-time snow and freezing rain comes. Stepping down the slope from the NW Entrance, the twigs and branches of the Woods are all adorned with silver from the sky. The freezing rain of yesterday, trickled down into inch-long icicles, distilling the essence of the surface of the Woods into frozen drops. Approaching the NW Pond, I disturb a Great Blue Heron and it flies away silently to perch in an old snag. The Woods are nearly still, and nearly silent. The light wind generates some creaking sounds from weighted branches. Two woodpeckers, with bright red heads fly up to perches, their foraging never done, their resources of rich burrowing beetles never exhausted. No deer visible out this morning. Settled into steep, south-facing ravines, sheltered from the north storm wind coming? A Barred Owl flies silently west across Hackberry Alley. Not much sign of the animal life of the Woods. A lone squirrel watches me closely for a moment, then runs up a tree, perches facing me again. Then slowly makes her way back to the ground in short jumps, but silently, frisking her tail at me, as if to challenge me, and shoo me away. She ascends another smaller 3 m elm, crosses to a tangle of grapevines connected to a larger elm and makes her way up. I wonder if the travel of squirrels is opportunistic and random; or if she has known, repeatedly used routes, Interstates connecting different trees and different places. Looks like she is just taking whatever route they can, but I bet she is following well-known routes.
Farther south in the Woods, where there is bare wet frozen soil, 'needle ice' has formed beneath flecks of bark, wood, broken shells of nuts, or small bits of rock. It has lifted and supports these an inch above the soil. I remember these from winter days in the red clay earths of North Carolina. They usually had a curious pronounced smell of wine or sour fruit. I check the ice needles here and there is no smell. I wonder why the ice needles form under small flecks of debris and not everywhere. Brown silty water is slowly draining out through the beaver dam, but low areas through the SW quarter of the Woods are underwater from the half inch rain Tuesday. West of the former Elm Bridge ice covers an irregular pool of water, roughly four feet by two. There are thirty or more contour rings around the ice sheet, resembling growth rings of trees. Why? Maybe as the pool drains and the periphery freezes, water is drawn by capillary action up to the ice; but why rings? Why not smoothly continuous? Always new things to discover and wonder about. Richness everywhere.

A drowned armadillo a day out of time

Went to the Woods this afternoon. 80 F February 15. It was a little bizarre how odd the day felt. I walked in via the NE Gate and the Tree Loop, crossed the Wash and wandered west along the trails.
At 4 the wind was still and the sky overcast. The warmth had odd insects out flying, a Polistes wasp, a heavy tachinid fly, a noctuid moth. None of these should have been awake- not until late March or April or May.
When I came to the East Pond I noticed the bubbles of methane production on the surface and then saw an odd sight. There at the shoreline, was a recently drowned armadillo. Armadillos are known to carry rabies (rare). Rabies causes insatiable thirst. Was the armadillo sick when it drowned? I pulled it from the water with sticks and buried it beneath a tree so other vertebrates would not get to it and potentially become sick.
The warmth of the day had broken the buds of an Elaeagnus autumn olive. They were just showing the bright green bits of the opening leaf buds. The Woods were very dry but ponds were more than two feet deep. All across the Woods, armadillos (also maybe skunks?) had bulldozed through leaf litter looking for invertebrates, snails, millipedes, beetles, isopods etc.
I saw two large white-tailed deer in the central Woods but was not close to them. Interesting how well their coat color blends with the overall color of the Woods. Tonight wintry winds are returning.

Cold Woods, New Sights Gophers

Winter walk in dry Woods, via the SW Gate. Cold late afternoon, twenty F but felt far colder. Gray skies and north winds. Quiet. Most everyone who could be indoors, was indoors.
Good time to explore off the beaten path. Find something new.  East of the NW Pond and 70 feet east of Walnut Jct, there is still a hanging 'thistle' bird feeder. 
All the leaf litter and organic soil around the nearby grove of five catalpas has been heavily turned over by a foraging armadillo ... looking for pecans, snails? Small group of three white-tailed deer moving northwest from Hackberry Alley. Tough time for larger animals. How to shelter against the day's cold, what to eat? How to live if you cannot hide or hibernate? The SW quarter of the Woods is filled with broken tops of ash trees, leaves still attached from the windstorms of summer. The well-used Main SW path has become a 'latrine' for some mammal, a fox? coyote? racoon? bobcat? Need to photo scat and figure it out. All will be washed away with first good rain. Leaving, I notice something I've not seen before in the Woods, piles of freshly turned dirt, gophers. The disturbed soil extended back to the south and the weedy drier ground outside the southern boundary.

Random Odd thoughts on dry Mid-winter Sycamore

Out to the Woods this afternoon at 3. It has been dry, dry, for a long time. Three months with < 1.4 inches... forty-five days with less than 0.25 inches. But the leaves in the litter have lost the crunchiness of the long dry late autumn. Now, as I walk along, the leaves underfoot all sound the same. In November they were distinct species with different sounds as you walked through.
Entering from the NW entrance, it is dry, but the NW pond has good extensive water. No problem drying down. There is a large area west of the East Pond, where the soil is wet enough to almost be muddy (not quite), plenty of water there. There must be good water table water seeping out/ up through this area. The water in the Wash is almost gone, but there remains a pool between the old mimosa stump and the corroded big pipe.
Three white-tailed deer were wandering around together. I sang aloud to them and then went another way, to not worry them. No sign of the pack of three dogs from earlier in the fall. I think Animal Control must have been successful in getting them to come in to food and shelter. ~ 10 inch tall 'thistle' bird feeder been strung on left side of trail over couple of sugarberries from camo-colored line. Have to discover if graduate student or who is watching this.
Few weeks ago I was near the north end of the Two Pecan Trail when I was surprised by a sudden explosion of scurrying just 20 feet away. First instant glance was running gray-colored squirrel-sized thing. It ran only a second, maybe 30-40 feet and stopped, an armadillo. I leaned against a tree and watched it for 5 minutes before it scurried behind a big rotten log and disappeared into its hole den.
The armadillos (and maybe skunks) have been foraging extensively plowing through the dry leaves to the soil layer searching for snails, beetles, grubs, other invertebrate food.
At the south end of the Two Pecan Trail, 70 feet NE of the southern big pecan, I noticed a lone young sycamore, small 5-6 inch diameter, maybe 30 feet tall. All by itself. Not many other sycamores in the Woods. How did this get here? I bet on this site, it becomes a giant tree, larger than the largest of the present cottonwood patriarchs in the Woods.
Mild, almost warm 50F day today, but we've had some periods of the coldest days of the winter. Weeks with lows in single digits and highs below 20F. The warming soil after that was odd. Dry soft inch thick layer of duff sitting on top of hard, frozen, lower, soil.