New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
The sunny sun dappled Suncook River and I can hear summer!
Tuesday 07/26/2005
When do you first notice that summer is definitely upon us? Is it that first stretch of days hitting 90 degrees? I think last year that didn't happen until August. For me, it is the first time I hear the buzzing of a katydid. That happened at 3:00 PM Monday. The long trailing buzzing sound of a katydid more than anything else means that we are truly into the summer season. Then, first thing this morning, one flew on to my deck and landed on a screen. I dashed into the house to get my camera to take a digital photo of it. But of course I got side tracked ( tracking down my camera, changing the battery, taking out the recycling material by the door, filling the dog food container). And when I got back out side after such a short deviation... it was gone. And so goes my vacation it seems.
I had a wonderful week the last half of last week, my first week of vacation, with my wife and I joining my daughter Amy, and her husband Derek and grand daughter Katie for a trip to Pennsylvania. We headed down last Wednesday and ended up in Lancaster for the night. My son Adam joined us for dinner as he was up from DC. We spent the balance of the week in Hershey.
What beautiful farm country. It so reminded me of my youth in Aroostic County Maine in the mid 1950's to early 1960's. Fields after gorgeous fields of corn, soybean?? and alfalfa. Amish Country had us looking at the early 1900's with horses cutting, raking and gathering the alfalfa. Only of course it was the huge potato fields in my youth. I was very surprised at the lack of car killed deer in our almost 20 hours on the roads over the 5 days. I saw only one dead deer. Plenty of raccoons and woodchucks, but not much else. At the zoo of America in Hershey I was disappointed they didn't have a fisher on display. After all, I helped ship 175 to the state for reintroduction there in the mid to late 1990's. They are doing well across the northern regions of the state.
This week I am spending it mostly working around the house. Grass hoppers are bouncing all over the place. Just in time to feed the baby animals. Some critters, like juvenile foxes and coyotes, get much of their nutrition this way. I also frequently glance at the Suncook River. It certainly looks much tamer in the high noon sun. The Hershey colored waters has been transformed into more summer-like waters the last week or so. Today the waters were a perfect reflection of the green growth abounding this summer. I haven't taken a two-week summer vacation in a while. I think I like it.
Tuesday 07-19-05 Stuck in a sun/shower season.
The last week or so it would seem we are living in the tropics. Each days has been hot and humid days with daily afternoon showers or thunder storms. Every time I think to check my rain gauge, there has been another inch or nearly so. I can't remember a stretch of time like this where my rain gauge needed checking daily during the summer months. So every little brook it seems is just burbling along this summer. In fact when I crossed Deer Brook last evening on my way down the road to check on my mother it too was running full tilt. Three summers ago it totally dried up. It has more typically been down to a mere trickle by this time of year most of the last 26 years I have been watching it. Water, water is every where. And from there looks of the hurricane season this year, we are bound to get a lot more rain in the next couple of months. Probably sooner than later one of the hurricanes is going to make a right turn down around Florida and drench us for a couple of days.
I did get out striper fishing for the day Sunday with fishing partners Jean and Joe. We fished out of Portsmouth for the day. The fishing reports in the paper said that the stripers had slacked off for the week. So it took a little searching to find some fish. But we did catch a few, although none were larger than the mid 20's. But we had another great day on the water and as always the fish were a bonus.
