New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

The heat is on, and a stampede of turtles.

Monday 06/06/2005

This has been a very strange spring. It seems like I am alternating between turning my furnace back on..then the AC on, practically the next day. The cold raw rainy spring has turned into a heat filled summer season within days.

The heat, into the high 80's last Friday and Saturday quickly changed the frog sounds down back in the meadow. Spring peepers, it seemed, would never stop chirping mid week last week, but by Saturday night were completely gone. As were the American toads. Overnight they were replaced with the calls of the gray tree frogs.

Tuesday I was on a field session with a group of 13 to look at recently protected properties around Great Bay. At out very first stop, which entailed a quarter mile or so hike into the woods in New market, we noticed numbers of peepers scampering on the forest floor. The great exodus from the nearby beaver ponds was on. The thimble sized peepers were scattering back into the forest not to be heard from, and certainly not seen, until next April.

I have seen three blanding turtles in just over a week. The first was an adult I picked out of the road not far from my house on June first. Then last Thursday a conservation officer brought one that had been injured by a car strike on Route 125 in Lee. Then Tuesday the whole group saw one in New Market. A little 5 year old juvenile turtle.

I have seen numerous dead turtles on the roads this last week. Several large snapping turtles practically smashed beyond recognition as well as numerous debris that I have judged to be crushed painted turtles. These are tough weeks for New Hampshire turtles. The adults are mostly females headed out across country to find a sunny spot to lay their eggs. These are 20 to 80 year old critters for the most part. When some of them were hatched there were few cars and almost no paved roads in the state. Imagine the changes wrought by man in just a turtles' life span!