Welcome Winter

The storm of the past few days passed over and left a cold clear day. It feels like the first day of winter. From the NW corner up the Ravine Trail a rabbit dashed away north. The West Pond was looking full at 2.18 feet and the East Pond was stable at 1.50 feet. The flooding west of the Beaver Dam was gone.. dried down into the spongy gray black organic soil. The Western Wash was full at the Elm Bridge but barely moving. Four deer bounded away from the Woods east of the West Pond. The Woods were quiet and the clear sky was cold.

Blustery Day

Overnight we had a slow gentle rain followed by a sharp freshet at 6 a.m., with a total of 75/100ths.
I was curious to see if that would produce flooding in the Woods, so drove down through the trash station to the South Central trail.
The Ragweed Delta and the Willow basin on the south were both flooded and water was moving slowly upstream west through the Beaver Dam; but had only gone less than 50 m west of the Dam. The area south of the dune along the Dune Trail was flooded but west of there was clear. At the upper Northeast corner of the Ragweed Delta there were rapids. But there was no break over across the levee and the water was just below the top log of the Elm Bridge and just below covering the island of Island Crossing.
The East Pond was at 1.37 feet and the West Pond was 2.16 feet.

There were 30-40 mph North winds gusting and tossing the tree tops. In the dense thickets of young 40 yr old green ash the trees rattled against each other like a percussion instrument across the stand. Light yellow leaves were still raining down and most trees are now bare.. but a few large cottonwoods still hold their yellow crowns. One white-tailed doe on the hill slope above the East Pond stopped, then ran away east.

November Cedars

In through the NE Gate today. No purpose, no urgency, just a Thanksgiving time to relax and absorb the Woods. Down along the Wash and below the Elm Bridge there were moderate swathes of green ground starting.. Stellaria chickweed, Duchesnea mock strawberry, Allium spring onions, Viola violets, Euonymus strawberry or burning bush.
Things to eat in the Woods: Symphoricarpos coralberry, Rosa multiflora red fruits, Allium spring onions, Lycoperdon fresh puffballs. Lonicera honeysuckle berries are probably mildly poisonous.

Two large brownish orange Araneus on their webs across the trail.. interesting to note when the last are seen this season and the first are seen next summer.

I found again the two parallel rows of limby cedars - each with 3-4 trees. The east end runs to just west of the junction of the N Loop to the E. Trans OWP. The west end intersects the alternate trail running north from Fence Corner. I need to scan between the trees for barbed wire fence with metal detector. These trees look like the vestigial markers of an old farm road. Birds perching along fence lines and depositing juniper seed. Coming and going through the NE entrance cedars there is a flock of robins maybe 20 birds foraging there.

Twenty more individual trees flagged and numbered with blue tape along the Tree Loop - including Sapindus?
Plus at the east end of the bur Oak Bridge, one single Nandina with bright green leaves.

Shallow pooled water still across the southern boundary of the SE quarter of the Woods, although the Main SW trail is mostly drained.

Trees with Tim V

Out to the Woods with Tim and R and G this afternoon via the NW Entrance on the Ponds Trail. We walked down to the still flooded Main SW Trail and Tim noticed elms with epicormic sprouting. New green leaves flushing all along the stem in late November with the loss of apical dominance. A sure sign of stress perhaps the last burst before death.. It would be interesting to look for as many trees as possible in the Woods with new flushing November leaves and watch their fate.. How many will be alive in the spring or early summer of 2012? Were these the trees that were attracting scores of hackberry butterflies this late summer/ early fall 2011?

Need to brainstorm with Tim about best ways to mark trails, junctions, distances, directions. How best to map? Need to map many more of the largest trees by GPS.

Maybe ask Heather M how to think about the trees with the epicormic leaf flush. For a given species (slippery elm) is there a characteristic signature of phloem sugars, plant moisture stress, stem volatiles? Maybe something butterflies can detect.. we can test or use to attract.. maybe attract beetles as well as butterflies.. an alteration of 'green leaf volatiles' aldehydes, ketones etc..?

Much of the Main SW Trail has drained and is now just sticky. Some large pools remain along the trail. Remarkably three mosquitoes found Tim.

Rain and floods return

Monday night we received 141/100 inches of abrupt rain before midnight. Today, Tuesday 4:30 PM I went to the SW Gate to see the Woods. Water was pooled on the Main SW trail at 150 m from the SW Gate.. narrow inch deep pools that broadened to wide ponded areas past Dragonfly corner around the leaning ash tree.
The E Pond had risen to 1.2 feet and the W. Pond to 2.03 feet. Water was flowing, draining slowly through the Beaver Dam. A White-tailed deer sprinted west from the dam. 7 or 8 new Shaggy mane Coprinus were emerging NW of the dam. Earlier population/ clone of these was NE of the dam.
The rain has brought down many more leaves and sounds carry more clearly/ starkly of traffic.. or other sounds. It would be interesting to record sound (noise) level in the Woods 365 days of the year at 5 PM rush hour and note the change with the season.

Best Time In the Woods

Early this mid November morning I went to the Woods. Overnight the weather had changed from near 80 yesterday to low 30's.. grey white sky. The past couple of days most of the leaves have come down. Some of the last are the cottonwoods. Now on the forest floor they turn the Woods to gold. The Grandfather cottonwood on the SW Trail still has near a full canopy of green leaves. I wonder if this is because it has roots down to better water.. or if it is a stress symptom.. or is genetic.
With a 20 mph wind, hour after hour last few days, I thought the ponds would lose a lot of water; but they both looked good. The East Pond has 0.74 feet and is maybe about one third its normal size. The West Pond has 1.88 feet and looks about 85% normal size.
Standing at the West Pond I heard a pileated woodpecker and then watched it fly in and begin to forage on a tree up on the plateau. The East pond has a sheen of organic oil from decomposition (maybe oil from new cottonwood leaves?).

This is the best time to be in the Woods. Full of light and color.. cool/ cold enough so no ticks or mosquitoes.. the understory open enough to see trees and features in the Woods hidden in summer. It is a good time to leave the familiar trails, go and explore new hidden things.. find new big trees, new tree species, new places. I began to see again the line of old sentinel cedars along the once upon a time fence rows; full of limbs from open field growth, overtopped now standing dead or tilted over, giving way to hackberry, walnut, elm, pecan. I puzzled again over several small trees (Viburnum?) with opposite small thorns and rounded reddish-yellow leaves with apical indented tip.. bark light mocha.. pebbly texture like miniature version of persimmon bark.. with smaller pebbles and much lighter color. The same white flower as the shrub at the east side of the West Pond?

Walking down in the dry Western Wash.. an amazing find, a new blooming light purple/ lavender violet.. one blossom.. on this early winter/ late fall day.. just above the junction of the East and West Wash.

Back in the sheltered ravines a 'bottle trail' branching west through the junk of a half century ago.. old bottles with unique miniature ecosystems.. healthy green moss cushions, protected catch basins for the rain.
There are three old car frames stripped to nothing but the heaviest metal parts, suspension, transmission, gear box and frame.
Up to the plateau and a potential route along the edge to the northwest corner of the top of the Ravine trail.

On the plateau 4-5 deer ran away northeast. I brought a saw and cleared some of the tangle of the broken ash top on the West Dune trail. Paraphrasing Robert Frost.. "something there is that doesn't love a trail.. that sends the crashing tree top and drops the tangling brier".
The old slow moving mangy bitch was south of the Grandfather cottonwood on the south side of the Dune. I think a trail can be made from the post by the Grandfather south. I need to blue blaze the tops of the old orange posts out in the western sedges.

Good time to think about why the smaller separate beds of sedge are distributed where they are.. and to see the zones of Lonicera Japanese honeysuckle (putting out new green leaves). The well defined contours/ elevation limits ( a few vertical centimeters) of flood inundation vs survival and growth.

Norma the Leucistic Red-Tailed Hawk

Down by the SW Gate I watched Norma, the leucistic Red-Tailed Hawk circling and hunting over the Woods and Pott's Dairy Farm.
South of the SW gate there are bright red translucent berries of a small Cocculus vine.

In the Woods, new green leaves of Lonicera japonica, Japanese Honeysuckle are sprouting from stems. Many of the tallest trees have lost 90% of their leaves. Along the South Service Road tall white daisies are still blooming. Some yellow small sulphurs and small acridid spur-throated grasshoppers are flying low over the ground.

On the new Tree Loop I numbered 49 trees with blue plumber's tape.. sixteen spp. (I think). I need some help with a couple of the Carya and Quercus. Need a few more spp. sycamore, red and white mulberry, catalpa, soapberry, etc.