Early June walk

4 June 2011 After week away up north (Iowa Lakeside Lab - cool, green); I returned to the Woods. It had been unseasonably warm. The Woods in from the SW gate were loaded with silk net homes of ground spiders.. this one corner more than any place else in the Woods.. maybe 40 m x 40 m.. don't know why..sunny/ dappled shade there, a bit more open. A few more mosquitoes now, but not bad. Abundant cotton from group of big Populus along western wash levee. One box turtle 50 feet west of beaver dam. Same location pile of feathers from flicker(?) eaten. No deer. Big flapping bird.. vulture - still not seen, continues to hangout in trees above south end of beaver dam.. whitewash on the ground there. Flood waters of last month help keep some trails open by flowing along the path (e.g. Barney Jct. trail). E. Pond is now much smaller. I need to place a measuring post there for water depth. Northern Loop becoming overgrown with understory..needs clearing. Need saw two places: Northern Loop by big pecan and Liriope patch & N-S fence line trail for fallen juniper.

Skunk, Measuring SE Wash

At 4:30 today I entered the Woods at the NE Gate on a warm (90F) humid day. Hiked to the Elm Bridge. Half inch of rain three days earlier on the 24th had brought a quick flood to the Wash. The flood cut west from below Elm Bridge flowing out of banks parallel and south of the E-W Fence Line. With warmth and wind, all (almost)of the standing water in the Woods was gone. The Wash today was still full but barely moving past the Elm Bridge.
I measured the SE Wash Trail from the South Service Road north 200 m to jct with E-W Fence Line Trail. Lot of tracks of coons (?) and deer. Mosquitoes were mild (4-5) with mild DEET. There will be more soon. There were numerous brilliant green Cicindela sexguttata(?) along the damp trail.. probably starting burrows for young in soft soil as puddles dry. At Post One (50 m N of Service Road) I had a lengthy encounter with a small young striped skunk. I surprised it digging in damp rotting leaves. Up went the tail.. and it stayed up. The skunk was 15-20 feet from me.. I was probably within its range. After a few minutes of unmoving stand-off, the skunk began energetically and threateningly to back away. Facing me, tail up it made short backwards shuffle jumps with front feet noisily dragging leaves in a threat display combined with an escape. It backed up against some small down branches blocking it and then after a moment came forward in what looked like a short bluff charge (to within a dozen feet.) I stood and spread my arms wide and growled and the skunk stopped, then began its backwards shuffle jumps again. Two or three more charges and retreats and after maybe ten minutes I moved on down the trail leaving the bold creature in peace.
Returning home I immediately changed and showered leaving my field clothes outside on the hot deck. I removed eleven ticks.. 5 tiny seed ticks and 6 larger.

Rediscovering Oklahoma in the Woods

I returned to the SW Gate this morning at 9. The Lonicera Japanese honeysuckle bloom is just about gone. The Cornus dogwood bloom is coming in to peak.

All through the southwestern corner, the Woods are draining and drying. I located some deeper pools along the trails where a water depth gauge stick might be usefully placed to start keeping records of the extent and length of inundation.

Up on the west Dune top a brilliant black blue pompilid fidgeted over the ground looking for spider prey. I cut the Cnidoscolus bull nettle leaves away from the Opuntia.. and wondered how many of my ecology students would know the trees, common plants and animals along this trail. Young scientists today could launch themselves into days of discovery just as Arthur Ortenburger did 1920-1930. In the process they could create an identity and much happiness for themselves. Students arriving at university as freshmen could be exposed to the natural history and diversity here locally in the county by visits to the Woods and Canadian River.

The state has changed. In many cases what could be documented are the flora and fauna of reserves, like Oliver's Woods now surrounded by highways that did not exist 90 years ago. Invasives have arrived, climate is shifting, successional processes have acted on abandoned farm fields, habitat has been fragmented, converted, exurbanized and reduced. The basic natural history of the state needs re-documenting. We have the population to do it now.. 3.7 million.

Across the Dune trail 3 whitetail deer splash and dash away. By the odd burial pit(?) like feature, a box turtle wanders south.

Second Turtle, Water Draining from Woods

Saturday morning, clear sunny, 75F light 8 mph wind. South Boundary trail is draining quickly at 10 AM. The trail through some low areas between A10 and C10 is still covered in water. East it is out of the water until back closer to G10. One small dytiscid zooming in sepia colored water.
Another small box turtle by old OWP sign. Enjoyed one black mulberry, mostly ripe. Kingfisher posted at G10. Five to six MS kites over head.

Flood, Turtle, Invertebrates in High Ground Refugia

Remarkable and Marvelous

Today we had 4.6 inches rain in 12 hours (midnight to noon). By afternoon the southern 15-20% and western 15-20% of the Woods were flooded- depths 18-30 “ (knee deep to waist deep) with many acre feet of water. (Acre foot = ~326,000 gal.) Marvelous what has happened..every species of centipede, pink millipedes, many thousands of isopods are clustered together on high ground, stumps, branch stobs, sticks. Normally hidden creatures, in a newly drowned forest, earthworms, ground beetles, stink bugs, harvestmen, snails, ants.. the invertebrates have been revealed and they are tightly jammed together in their refugia, wherever there is high ground. In a mutual non-aggression pact predators and prey are jammed together with no evidence of predation as the water rises.
Up on the trunks of trees between chinks of bark there are pentatomids, carabids and more.. a bright red & midnight blue melyrid, waiting out the rain and the rising water.
Bark gleaning birds can/ will have a feast.

OU by flooding the forest (with runoff from Lloyd Noble arena parking lot) sets up conditions for an extraordinary survey of Arthropods. Why are the isopods so dominant in numbers?
The flooded area has been dry and then very dry since February snow until recent 2.5 inch rain late April. But it was flooded last year for long enough to exterminate many of the resident macro-invertebrates. The ones there today are good dispersers, survivors and colonizers. (CA isopods were dominant macro invertebrates in disturbed areas.) I see two of the pretty, exotic pale bordered roach. A big Camponotus carpenter ant colony in a rotten green ash is busy transferring larvae from one part of its nest in a large (now floating) punky log to another. Along NS fence line trail there are isolated pools of struggling earthworms and I collect several of the larger bulky and several of the skinny small ones. Be interesting to see if we have the natives still there or if these are the European worms.

What about the vertebrates? snakes? lizards? They all have to climb trees or leave.
I find a young box turtle by a washed out channel near Elm bridge.. first box turtle I've seen this year. In the NE Woods I startle 2 or 3 deer.. loud snorts.

Aleuria red earth cup fungi are new, out on the Northern Loop. Why so red? Attract spore dispersing flies??? but most of its spore dispersal is by wind.

The East Pond is greatly expanded, filled beyond its borders.. extending out to the jct with the Ravine Trail.. an abrupt change in water chemistry and dissolved oxygen.. interesting change for dominant microbial decomposers in the pond.

A few mosquitoes down on the south side of the Woods.. more to come now.

Density of floating twigs, leaves, ash seeds other lignin debris is quite variable. What determines where it will cover the water surface and where it is absent? What are consequences for decomposition and rafts of debris after drying or drainage.. seed beds? invertebrate and fungal decomposition hotbeds?

More Measuring and Mapping

I returned to the Woods (NE Gate) at noon with tape measure and notebook. It was sunny and 80 F. I began adding natural history observations and some tree species at measured distances along the Escarpment Trail. I covered the first 300 ft with more detail. I will try to update this file each time I go to the Woods and can locate features along one of the measured trails. This project could take a long time.. and never be finished.. always more observations to add. I hope this can serve as the data for a Tree Tutorial Trail. The May 7 draft of the file is loaded on the Oliver's Woods web page under the Maps link as Olivers Woods Post-Mapping Project.xlsx

Along the trail in bright sun spots I saw up to a dozen brilliant green tiger beetles Cicindela sexgutata? - individually or in pairs. I saw no deer or dogs or turtles today.

Today at Elm Bridge the Wash was not flowing.. a pool extended to within about 20 feet of the bridge - upstream.
Early cotton was floating down from the big cottonwoods east of the Elm Bridge and collecting in the eastern dry wash below the Elm Bridge. Not what Robert Frost had in mind but it seemed to fit the moment and the place.
"Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow."

Measuring and Mapping the Woods

This afternoon Lance and I began measuring and mapping the Woods trails. Beginning at the NE gate, foot-long stakes cut from cedar branches were placed every 50 meters down to the Elm Bridge (`290 m).. across the orange E-W Fence Trail; past Tall Stump (another 200 m) to the end of the orange trail and the jct with the yellow Main SW Trail (~650 m total).
Then on to the SW Gate for a new zero point and we placed stakes out to the end of the yellow trail at the Beaver Dam (500 m).
Then on to the S Boundary and a new zero at Carpenter's G10 post. We placed stakes north across the white Dune trail to the Dam (100 m) .. then up Hackberry Alley to jct with green Trans OWP trail (340 m total).
We saw no large animals but I thought I heard two deer moving off west of Hackberry Alley. The pools of water along the Main SW trail were almost entirely gone but the soil was quite damp and there was plenty of water all along the Western Wash.
Four tiny seed ticks < 1 mm and one larger young tick.