Thin Ice

Back to the Woods Saturday afternoon. On a drippy cool afternoon I escaped doldrums and headed to the Woods for a walk. Four large white-tailed deer bounded or sauntered west along the Pipeline Trail into thick junipers for cover.
In the SW quarter along the Main SW trail I sloshed through acres of inches deep water mostly covered with a thin sheet of ice. Breaking through with each step, I wondered what the ice does to (or for) conditions below: temp(?) dissolved gasses (?) oxygen, methane etc, and life in the water.. young aquatic snails or amphibians hatching from clear jelly masses attached to submerged sticks & logs. What does the ice do to sound in the woods? Is it like the acoustic effect of a tile floor instead of carpet? Are deer spooked by and avoid thin ice, when normally they trot through 3-5 inch deep water? Does it change navigation for nocturnal  vertebrates, mice, voles, shrews, skunks, raccoons, armadillos, opossums?

Draining Olivers Woods

This fine mild Saturday morning, I went to the Woods armed with knee boots and a hoe. I headed to the sodden southwest corner of the Woods. Water pushed in there months ago by heavy fall rains and run-off from the university parking lots around the arena has never drained or evaporated away. The SW corner has not historically been a wetland. It supports a closed canopy forest of elm, big bur oaks, sugar berry, green ash, persimmon, and others. The roots of these trees can only take inundation for so many days or weeks before they begin to die back and the trees are stressed or killed. I decided I would make small efforts to remove obstructions and increase the flow of the impounded water out of the Woods. This is not normally a good idea in natural wetlands. They should remain flooded as long as they are naturally.
Through the southwest gate and along the main trail I walked only a hundred yards before encountering standing water. I figure if I increase the flow rate by just a little it could have a positive effect over the days before our next forecast rain. There were acres of water, mostly just a few inches deep. I sloshed along through the continuous shallow lake noticing bright green submerged leaves of Polygonum pink ladies thumb, growing luxuriant mats of fine stranded green algae. There were small dime-to-half-dollar-sized floating light yellow 'puffs'.. something growing.. not sure what. There was here and there a fine sheen of oil. I used to take as pollution by petroleum oils, until I realized that natural decomposition of leaves and organics also produces this same healthy sheen.
I walked east and south to the old Beaver Dam. The water there was barely moving through the cut. Downstream the flow was impeded by mats of leaves and fallen trees. I started moving things aside and clearing a foot-wide channel to allow flow. Down by the big willows on the south boundary a large elm had crashed across the channel and blocked the flow almost entirely. I cleared branches and leaves using the backed-up water to assist clearing a channel.
After a few hours there was a clear flow maybe an inch deep. I felt good. That was success. Over the hours and days ahead, that would gradually allow the Woods to begin to drain.. not entirely. There were going to be low areas that held water; but the acres of backed up water could now begin to slowly move out. As I walked out, I thought how just clearing that small a channel a quarter mile away would start to have an effect on the water molecules, the tens of thousands of gallons and the many tons of water backed up to the west. I am sure there will be water remaining all along the trail when the next rains come. But hopefully the water level will be a few millimeters or centimeters lower and roots of trees along the channel may gain a partial benefit.

Owls and the Evening

To Oliver's Woods this January 20 evening at 5:30. The past week or fortnight each time I enter the NW entrance a barred owl silently flies away eastward in front of me. I think it is perched at sunset in the big pecan south of the NW entrance. I did not see it this evening. When I was in the center of the Woods I heard an owl in the distance, off to the east. I walked over to the junction of the East Wash and the West where a barred owl nested the past couple of years. There have been some big changes. Two of the largest old cottonwoods are down - one broken huge top lays across the wash by the big bur oak that washed out there. The juniper the owl used to perch in at sunset is still standing, healthy.
Hearing the owl in the distance I gave my  screech owl whistle imitation (poor) and got a reply from the barred owl -  over-calling me.

This time of the year the Woods are the most bare. You can see through to distant trees and sound travels easily. I noticed the forms
With the light falling and twilight coming on, I turned back west to depart.

Natural History and the Woods

After cold blustery NW storm winds, I went for an afternoon walk in the Woods. I did not find any largish branches, and there were no trees down across trails. Lots of small branches cut by Oncideres twig borers. The two ponds were both still well-filled and the Main SW trail was still flooded despite no significant precipitation in a week or more.
I encountered for four big white-tailed does at the east end of the North Trail. I waved to them and sang a greeting out loud. They looked uncomfortable, suspicious and curious. After a minute or two they moved away north.
Started thinking about the opportunity to bring small groups of people to Olivers Woods to explore/ learn about natural history, the deer, the trees, fungi, the invasives, reading the landscape, birds, beetles, insects, geology, human history, aquatic/ wetland ecology, tracks, other wildlife, etc.
Be fun to do this with just a dozen or fewer. Let everyone get to know the Woods. Maybe expand to other local areas, too.

Winter walk with Robert and chemicals

Met Robert this morning and went to the NE Gate to go look for soil. Robert is interested in the zillions of novel soil microbes, new undescribed species, and especially interested in the novel compounds they make. Should be enough for a lifetime in Olivers Woods. I asked Robert what the wonderful smell was in the Woods after a warm winter rain on fresh fallen leaves. He replied most of the odors are terpenoids geosmins made by Streptomyces. Human noses are very good at detecting the smells. I'd like to know the name of a hundred different unique smells in the Woods.. and what makes them so I can be more aware of what is going on.

Yesterday went to the Woods late in the day. Just saw one large doe bounding away. Ponds are quite full. After days of strong winds nothing much was down.

Roaring Wind, Silent Heron

Woke on a pleasant 48 F degree Sunday morning in late November. That was the high temperature. The wind was coming.
At 2:30 and 28F I stopped by the Northwest entrance of the Woods for a walk to see what was happening.
The wind was roaring.
I quickly walked down the slope into the lee of the northern slope and entered the relative calm under the trees. The winds were roaring overhead now and I wondered if trees would come down. I came to the NW pond and there stood the tallest great blue heron I think I've ever seen. It stood silently on the far side of the small pond. It colors were great camouflage with the gray and brown stems behind it. It tracked me as I walked past the pond, slowly turning its head. I did not linger or disturb it further.

Walking past the big tilted Carpenter cottonwood, I was glad it had shed its leaves and was standing bare, with less surface area for the wind to tug. Approaching the East Pond there was a burst of life as three white-tailed deer stood and bolted away from the SE side. They disturbed a large barred owl that flew silently from my NW side of the pond.
The Woods are largely bare now except for the incongruous green of the invasive Euonymus heart's a bustin' shrub with its red berries, on the SW shore of the East Pond and south next to the second largest cottonwood #200.
On the south side of the main East West Trail, east of Fence Corner the red elms in the under story have flushed new green leaves, a few weeks old. The under story there looks a bit like April. Odd..

Just south of East Pond, and again west of Elm Bridge, small passerines, wrens and other species were disturbed, flying rapidly around, scolding and chasing each other. I couldn't see a predator. I wondered if they are stressed and hustling to ready themselves for the sudden change in the weather.

The water depth in the NW Pond was 2.49 feet and in the East Pond 2.15 feet. There was still water in the Eastern Wash, and all the way to the Elm Bridge, but it was not flowing, dry from the Elm Bridge southward. Dry at Island Crossing. The NW Pond is covered in a light chocolate mouse brown of old pollen, now shoved up in a wrinkled skin to the eastern shore.

Cool Twilight

Went for a nice twilight walk at 5:30 from the NE Gate, quickly escaping down the path away from the highway traffic noise and into the sheltering quiet of the trees. Down across the Wash at Elm Bridge, I stopped to look south at the still yellow golden sky with darkness closing. The leaves have recently completely dropped and revealed once again the skeleton of the woods in silhouette. You can't see this during the day. Too much light and too much detail and distraction. But after sunset, with just the black silhouettes of the stems, branches and trunks against the yellow golden sky, you can see the structure of the trees. The way they interact, compete and grow. You could study this for a long time and learn a lot about trees.
Walking north along from the Two Pecan trail there was a barred owl calling. I stopped and gave a screech owl call. The barred owl paused a longer time, as if puzzled, then called again. I answered with the screech owl five or six times looking in the fading twilight out to the larger trees and then thought I saw, farther off, a large bird flying away north. I think my owl didn't know what to make of me.