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.

Birds in the Forest

Out this late December afternoon to the Woods to escape ennui and see what the real world was doing. I wandered from the Northeast gate south along the Tree Loop and stopped to survey the view from the heights above the wash. In December it is possible to look over, down into, and across the Woods from this vantage point. The leaves are gone. The wash below has significant volume of standing water, despite our past many days without rain. I paused by the old walnut and remembered admiring its large size when I first walked this way. It would take one and a half of me to wrap arms around its circumference. I watched it struggle and lose its crown in a drought ten years ago, and hoped that it would rebound.. and it did, but not enough. It slowly declined until the year I searched its crown to find any green leaves. Now one low branch has fallen, and bark all around the base is falling away from the bole. Walnut wood is dense, heavy and strong. I expect that the snag will stand for years and serve as home for many denizens of the Woods. Already at the base there is a hole large enough for a small opossum or raccoon leading into what must be a fine dry home in the base of the hollow trunk.
South and west I walked to find a crew working along the southern boundary and the power line right of way. I am sad to see the trees there I have watched and gotten to know over the years of walking here. They will stop growing with chemical inhibition or be cut. Another encroachment of our civilization upon the precious remnants of local wild forest we have surviving.
Fifteen years ago when I first came to these Woods they were a small wildlife sanctuary where I found creatures, fox, skunks, raccoons, squirrels, rabbits, armadillo, box turtles and snapping turtles, coyote, bobcats, deer, owls, hawks and nesting accipiters. The Woods were connected then through a broad corridor down to the wilder lands stretching for miles along the river. Then the new trash facility was built in the floodplain, cutting the corridor to a narrow 30 foot wide conduit of cane. All the cover that remains for the wildlife populations that used to roam into the Woods. Now the Woods are quieter, diminished. But still the miracles of trees and roots, of fungi and insects, of small soil animals and infinite microbial diversity in each micro plot persists. The community of trees and shrubs, 30 different species still stands. Their roots are what matters, what defines the individual. Storms may break the stems. Heat, ice and cold may damage or kill the canopy; but if the roots survive and sprout new shoots, the individual remains, and communicates with neighbors, not in a mystical or magical sense, but through mycorrhizae, root physiology, their communal biology.
Reaching the Southwest gate on Chautauqua, I walked north from the big bur oaks to the low SW Woods that was still largely flooded inches deep. I settled on the big green ash log and watched a passel of birds enjoying the warm winter day and the good habitat. A dozen robins took turns flying down to the preferred bathing spot, flapping their wings and splashing water on themselves while a smaller flock of goldfinches in camouflage winter plumage picked through wet leaves and the sodden environment. Two yellow-shafted flickers and three red bellied woodpeckers investigated broken snags and branches, looking for tasty spiders and plump grubs. Two blue jays flew into the branches of the mid canopy, watching for opportunity, and a pair of bright red male cardinals perched low in the fallen branches. The Woods on very cold days can be quiet. The birds move south, or seek shelter; but today they were busy enjoying a mild day in winter.

Flame in the forest and Deer Kill

Monday afternoon I returned to the Woods southwest gate to re-mark trail blazes through the southern section. Trails had been inaccessible here with recurring flood water. From the South Boundary Trail, I crossed the dune and beaver dam. Looking down along the drainage from the North South Trail, one tree stood out like a burnt orange flame in the bare forest. A young Bradford Pear. Standing eighteen feet high, the top half foot's leaves were gray black, killed in the recent sharp 14F cold snap. The rest of the tree was a beautiful rich orange, the only tree with full leaves remaining along the drainage.

I walked north to the East West Trail and spotted tufts of white fur 75 feet west of the broken elm. Then I saw the rumen, the dark grassy green stomach mass of a deer. A deer had been killed and predators had consumed the carcass leaving patches of white fur, a bit of bloody bone and the rumen of the gut. The rest had been eaten or hauled away to another place. I imagine the pack of coyotes that occasionally visit the northern ravines in the Woods had found a yearling, dragged it down and killed it. Could have been a wild dog pack too, but I have not seen any of those in the Woods for a few years.

South of the Elm Bridge I re-marked the trail leading to the south boundary and spotted two white masses near one of the big cottonwoods. It was two Coprinus mushrooms, just fallen and beginning deliquescence. They looked like Shaggy Mane, Coprinus comatus (although that is not our local spp.) the famously edible mushrooms (when fresh) that will make you sick when consumed with alcohol.

By 5:30 the western horizon was a dramatic deep orange of clouds and I walked the Southern Boundary trail back to the gate.

Coyotes and crickets

  Saturday late afternoon I went to the Southwest Gate of the Woods to enjoy a walk. I took a small bow saw with the intention of clearing a few hanging Ampelopsis raccoon grape vines and small trees fallen across the trail. I walked the South Boundary trail and enjoyed the peaceful silence. A mile north, football fans, perhaps 80,000, gathered for a night game with Iowa.
  It was a mild late afternoon. I disturbed one white-tailed buck, north of the big bur oaks. He snorted in alarm, flashed his white tail and trotted north deeper into the Woods where tree crickets were singing. This will likely be the end of the cricket season, and the end of the lives of this generation. Another warm day Sunday with a forecast high of 71 F, then a cold front from Siberia arrives Monday night, with a forecast low of 19 F. The sudden drop may kill the late season songsters.
 Clearing a few logs and vines I walked east, and then north to cross at Beaver Dam. At the southern base of the old dune I remembered my close encounter with a barred owl. I have not heard any barred owls in the Woods in the past few weeks. I wonder if they have moved to different woods.
  I stopped by the patch of bittersweet I had been battling and thought I could still see green leaves up in the canopy, but in the low light it was impossible to be sure. I puzzled again over the remarkable flush of new fresh green leaves of scattered red elms and box elder in the under story south of the East West trail. What could be going on there? If we hit 19 F Monday night I imagine these leaves will all die and be left hanging black on the trees.

   At Elm Bridge there was still a good wide channel of water backed up to Island Crossing. This evening it was still. By Tuesday it will be iced over and I wondered if it would be thick and strong enough to walk or skate on - probably not. I enjoyed a moment there at 5:40 PM watching the full moon rising in the eastern sky. The sun had set, leaving a golden gloaming of all the western horizon through the branches of the trees.
  As I turned to make my way back across the Woods I heard a lone coyote howl off in the distance, probably south along Jenkins Rd. Silence followed for two or three minutes then it was answered by a chorus of other coyotes joined in singing their up and down calliope of sound.
  Nice farewell to the Woods for the evening.

November weeds and swingblade

   Sunday morning was cool and clear. I took my old swing blade to the northeast gate to clear a path to the Tree Loop. The entry to the Tree Loop has had the entire growing season of 2019 to heal some of the damage from the over zealous line crew right of way clearing. Annual weeds have grown waist high and thick enough to obscure the entrance trail. Native Symphoricarpos coralberry or buckbrush and exotic Ligustrum privet have grown in. The steep slope down to the Wash and the trail along it, is now stabilized by shrubs and annual weeds. Down along the Wash, invasive Sorghum Johnsongrass is thick and high and made a bed for two deer. They pressed down the vegetation where they lay but kept a sheltering wall of tall weeds. (Through the Woods there are numerous new small buck scrapes where male whitetail have scraped away the leaf litter and marked the soil to mark their territory).
The northeast section of the Tree Loop has also grown up in panic grass and other grasses. enough to obscure the way. I cleared a path through overgrown areas along the Pipeline Trail and to the top of the Levee Trail.
  I noticed fewer than 20% of the leaves of the bur oak and pecan had fallen. The oak leaves were still quite green and healthy. I wonder if this will change quickly now with our recent sharp cold temperatures down into the mid 20's F.
  I watched one squirrel out gathering winter food. It looks like the bur oak may have had a mast year for acorns(?) not entirely obvious.
  I walked down to the patch of invasive bittersweet and found two more largish older vines, both with green leaves up in the canopy. I pulled them up by the roots. Surprising how many of the vines there are. I keep thinking I have eradicated all the large ones, only to find more.
  At the beaver dam the crossing was dry, although Island Crossing was still fairly full.
  Around the Woods with cool mild fall temperatures and some good rains the new growth of winter green plants is beginning, grasses and annual forbs both.