New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Another 80 plus degree day

Friday 09/18/2015

This late summer heat wave has no doubt been tough on our moose. When temperatures are above 79 degrees moose stop feeding. That is not good fro our moose in that female moose are getting too hot too often and are not putting on sufficient weight over the summer to give birth to twin calves like they used to. And underweight yearlings are failing to successfully even carry their normal single calf to term.

This is on top of our shorter winters happening more frequently which is killing off the calves with winter ticks. Last winter moose biologist Kris Rines says 70 percent of the calves radio collared in January were dead by the end of April.

So it is the combination of hotter summers into fall and our shorter winters that has lead to a nearly 50 percent decline in moose numbers the last 14 or so years. It used to be that we had these conditions infrequently, say once a decade or so, and the moose population recovered during the "normal" years. But now our too hot summers and shorter winters are coming much more frequently and the moose population has had a continuous downward trend since 2000.

I know I have not done a NH Nature Notes in a while. But I can tell you now that yes this summer was hot and dry. Here in Epsom I've hardly had even a half inch of rain in a storm since April. Seems like winter would not go away with cold conditions the full month of April. I didn't even get my garden in the ground until the second week of May. Then the drought hit. Nothing was coming up. I replanted my beans to no avail. The few plants that did come up grew maybe six inches tall. For the second year in a row my garden is a bust. Though I did get some squash and a few ears of corn are just now available.

From what I have seen the turkey population had a great year with numerous flock with young scattered about town. Though I am concerned that my prediction in April that a late spring would spell disaster for our frogs and salamanders was right. As I said because of the late cold spring frogs and salamanders were several weeks late going to the vernal pools to lay eggs. Then came the drought in May that has lasted until now. I'm thinking many vernal pools quickly dried up even before many of the young frogs and salamanders had a chance to grow legs and leave the pools successfully. I know I have not seen the usual plentiful numbers of baby toads hopping about as I have seen in most years. So our frogs and salamanders took a hit this year.

The local native brook trout streams are practically dry this late summer. They too are probably taking a hit this year. These are the smaller brooks that even in a good year you can find places to jump across them, well I used to be able to, but this year the flow of water has essentially stopped. Even the larger Deer Brook down the road from me has looked to stop flowing at times. I walked a smaller brook in town a couple weeks ago and the water that was left looked terrible. Not a good year for our native brook trout either.

We haven't even had a good soaking from the remnants of a southern hurricane. We really are desperate for water. Here it is the high 80's just three days from the first day of fall. Can't help but think that the temperature switch will happen suddenly soon. Three or four years ago we would have been out only a month from the 15 inches of snow we got on Halloween. So yes things can change fast from here on out.