New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

The Toad Invasion Has Started.

Sunday 07/18/2004

I caught the leading edge of this years local juvenile toad invasion today. I was helping Rick Hamlett with his stairs to the Suncook River about a mile south of me on River Road in Epsom. After helping him most of the day we completed the platform near the rivers edge. The edge of the river was dotted with dozens of this years hatchling toads swarming ashore facing a 40 or 50 foot banking to the plateau above. I noticed a few tiny toads along the edges of my lawn just before dusk this evening. When the "wave" of recently hatched toads hits my lawn will be swarming with hundreds or maybe even thousands.

This wave will surge across the road too as the tiny tots scatter into the surrounding fields and forests to mature several years before a tiny percentage flock back to the back eddies of the Suncook River to mate and carry on the cycle. With so many new houses down this one-way road and a tremendous increase in traffic the last half dozen years I know the numbers making it the first few weeks of life will be vastly diminished.

I had a very interesting Saturday as I provided two hour-long lectures on the significance of riparian habitat for wildlife at a workshop at the Strafford County Complex. I was called upon to do a presentation at 11:00 and 1:45 on wildlife along the riparian habitat. Fortunately my station at the day-long series of workshops called Managing Your Own Woodlands was right along the riparian zone of the Cocheco River in Dover.

I really tried to tie the history and importance of the state's furbearers to the riparian zone as well as the diversity of wildlife that included the furbearers. Of coarse the beaver was a central figure since it create so much riparian habitat with the ponds they build. The lecture ended at my spotting scope which was trained on a new osprey nest which was built on an artificial platform placed on the county farm just last fall. As I was setting up the scope I could hear a juvenile make begging calls as it scanned the sky waiting for a parent to deliver it's next meal. Over two dozen attended the first lecture and about ten the second.

All these folks interested in managing their land for wildlife and they were so full of questions and wildlife experiences themselves. All in all I was a great day interacting with so many interesting people.