New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
Summer is holding on but the birds are leaving quicker than leaves can fall.
Thursday 08/29/2013
Despite the high humidity and summer-like temperatures of the last several days clearly summer is soon to escape us. And where did it go? Seems like a cold spring lasted so long that summer was but a flash in the pan. I know it seemed to have escaped from me this year.
Already birds are in migration south. In just a couple of weeks, the teens of September, most of our hawks will vacate the state as well. It seems like the ducks I see are already getting antsy and are milling about. Nervous ducks it seems. I wonder do they worry about winter? Lets hope we don't have another Snowtober to prove them right for worrying.
Crickets hit a full chorus around here two weeks ago. According to my 90 year old mother this foretells of a soon to be frost. And indeed we did have a frost this evening thirty something years ago on the eve of my daughter's birth. I took a break from a long and exhausting labor, well mostly my wife's, come to think of it, any ways I headed out at first light that Sunday morning to get a paper and found my windshield covered in a thick frost. Hey I wasn't gone long, and my daughter wasn't born to much later that day. You gotta have the Union Leader Sunday News no matter what.
Although we haven't had much rain the last week or two things really are still green and lush. No doubt that third crop of hay will be ready soon. And the local farmers corn that got a slow start with the rain June has come along pretty well the last month or so. My garden is slow to produce as well. That is except the zucchini. I made my 87th pint last week of relish. Tomatoes are slow to ripen and the cukes have only produced enough for a couple dozen quarts of pickles so far.
Last Friday I spent the afternoon in Colebrook at the Moose Festival. We had perfect weather and a good crowd through the afternoon. I saw Senator Shaheen drifting by the Main Street and I quickly scooped up my moose antler to give her a close up. I was tabling the event for the National Wildlife Federation to bring the plight of our declining moose to the folks up there. Not surprisingly many of the locals reported seeing fewer moose, especially the last three or four years.And most of them connect the dots with "Its that tick thing." though few connected it to our warmer winters. In fact according to UNH scientist Cameron Wake this state's average winter temperatures are up some four degrees since 1970. Yes! Not 50 or 70 years ago but just 40 years ago.
