New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

The heavens were filled with stars,satellites and summer sounds last night.

Thursday 06/02/2005

Wednesday night was an awesome night to be alive and outside. Really one of the first warm nights of the year and I spent hours with my life-long friend and neighbor, Rick Hamlett, on one of our "night hikes". We have done them pretty regularly since he built a house near me in 1985. It used to be almost every week, but the last year or two far less frequent. So it was especially good to get out on the best night in many months. We took our sister GSP pups along for the evening, which turned into a late night hike.

We decided to drive the short distance to Bear Brook State Park so the dogs could run and play as pups do. So, we didn't need to worry about traffic, as we hiked behind a gated road. We arrived after 8:00 PM catching the fading light as we covered some ground early on. I like to check out several wildlife habitat improvement projects that have been conducted in the area including some clear cuts, clearing to create a pitch pine area and some recent controlled burn areas. We visited them all before dark.

We stopped on the bridge over Bear Brook and noticed a lot of fish action. Shiners by our estimate on some kind of feeding frenzy. Just beyond as the brook backs into some wetlands we heard the loudest chorus of peepers so far this year. Dueling wetlands as is were. A pickerel frog snorted infrequently to interrupt the high pitched roar.

Just as near darkness befell the view a second flock of Canada geese honked by off to the west as if chasing the sunset. Then a whip-poor-will, very close by, announced the near total darkness as we meandered back north. Then as we rewound the sounds as we retraced our steps new sounds kept being added to the quickly cooling night air. Two more distant whip-poor-wills; then a coyote family let rip their eery wails casting them into the now star studded heavens in the direction we had hiked from not 20 minutes before.

We stopped in a large open area to glean the sounds from the crisp night air. A distant whip-poor-will gave us a constant back drop of a summer sound. We stood there well over an hour as the stars became more and more vivid. The stars just seemed to suddenly blossom like a flower.

Then, I started spotting satellites arcing across the pinnacle of sky directly over our heads. One, then a second, fairly bright, as they sped across the star spangled sky at 17,500 mph. A thirds was a bit dim, but the fourth was bright again all headed from due South towards due North.

A second coyote family from across the Suncook River answered the eastern crowd. Now dueling coyotes with us in the middle. Life could not get better at that point it seemed, but two very brilliant satellites appeared more toward the western horizon, one looking like it was chasing the other into the scoop of the Big Dipper, which had by now had seemingly poured hundreds of stars into the sky. A pair of satellites raced north to south at about the same time. Plus a couple of shooting stars added for good measure. My count was 10 satellites for the night by the time we left after 11:00 PM. By then the night air was very chilly and began to seep into my legs setting them in motion for the short hike back to my truck. At 11:28 PM another flock of geese cruised by their voices casting sharper notes into the chilled air.

Today, Thursday, I met Julie my assistant at the Region 3 office. We loaded up the 20 crab apple trees readied for planting at a farm in Farmington. Nearly each year for at least the last decade turkey license fees have been used to purchase crab apple trees which are planted in groups of twenty to provide future winter food for turkeys. We had 5 plots to allocate to the Region this year. So 100 trees will be planted by us, or private cooperators, over the next week or so. Literally a couple thousand trees have been planted the last decade that will help all sorts of wildlife survive our winters for the next century or more. It's a job I enjoy each year. Luckily the farmer brought out his backhoe to take bites of the rock filled land as Julie and I quickly backfilled them leaving a line of trees along a beautiful old stone wall. Very gratifying work in a mornings time.

I did get a chance to take my son Adam, and his life-long friend, Derek, out for a couple of hours of fishing just before dusk. We hammered the pickerel again catching one fish after another as a nice 80 degree breeze kept the black flies away. He is returning to DC over night tonight. His week home has fleetingly passed somehow. Still a great week despite the lousy weather, and it ended in perfection. Life IS good!