New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
Turkeys, ducks, geese, red efts, a toad orgy and the biggest snapping turtle I have ever seen. Top it off with toads trilling tonight. Life is good!
Thursday 05/04/2006
Wow, what a roll I have been on the last couple of days. Yesterday I spent most of the day at two turkey registrations stations. It was opening day of the regular spring gobbler season in NH and I was at check stations checking on how the turkey hunting was going in my region. An annual event for me. I'm not a turkey hunter myself but I like to be out there mixing it up with the hunters on opening day to see for myself how the season is going. Plus you learn tons of information on turkey flocks by town and sometimes location. I spent the first several hours at Steve's Sportsmen's Den in Hooksett and checked 16 turkeys. About 11:00 am I moved down to Wildlife Sports in Manchester. I saw another 8 birds there by mid afternoon. I learned where a turkey was taken not very far from where I grew up in the early 1960's in Londonderry.
I started today very early, rolling out of my house a little after 4:30 am for my last turkey/grouse survey. Again this is one that starts a half hour before sunrise, which put me in place to start the ten mile line at exactly 5:06 this morning. No luck hearing a single grouse or turkey this morning although most years I have heard at least one or the other on this route. The fog was thick when I left my house in the dark but luckily had nearly cleared when I got to my starting point. A section of this survey takes me past a locked gate in Bear Brook State Park Good thing as the road was littered with the red eft stage of the red spotted newt. I was creeping along between the mile distant stops and carefully missing these gorgeous little creatures. This gate was not locked for years and I'm sure most other drivers would not pay any attention to these two inch long creatures even though they are florescent orange in color.
By late morning I was down into Bedford and Londonderry for my last spring breeding waterfowl survey. This one takes me within a mile of where I grew up as a child. Here I did find a huge newly flooded alder swamp and had to carefully sirvey it for ducks. The trees are so thick, yet they are flooded so I move 20 or 30 feet and then study the flooded trees and brush for a duck. I did spot a female hooded merganser, a drake wood duck a single drake mallard, a pair of mallards, two hen mallards and a lone goose. Up the steep banking above the flooded trees is a spent sand pit with some more wetlands that warrant a peek. Up there in the full sun the warm waters had attracted dozens of American toads in for their annual breeding. In fact it was an orgy of toads! Males were fighting each other for the fewer bloated females and some toads already locked in a mating embrace were being assaulted by other males trying to shove off the already attached male. It truly was an orgy.
I got home around 3:30 just in time to take my son Adam fishing in a local pond and to give my 15 foot boat its trial run of the year. We generally target pickerel in this pond and largemouth bass are a plus. And we caught numbers of both, plus saw beavers, muskrats, more ducks and a pair of ospreys. Oh yea, several turtles too. Except Adam spotted a big turtle head protruding from the water and we headed for it. We always have liked catching and releasing turtles by hand too. Just another fun thing to do. Except Adam yelled for the net and he scooped up a giant snapping turtle that he could barely lift into the boat. I'm pretty sure it is the biggest I have ever seen. At least 60 pounds worth of long-necked snapping turtle! It was our best catch of the afternoon. How it tried to take some parts of Adam he would prefer to keep. We didn't keep him in the boat with us too long. We had a great laugh and this trip will long be remembered because of this giant turtle. I am totally beat and this days has now slipped into nearly into 11:00 pm. Where does time go?. But I will fall to sleep listening to the toads down in the meadow at full trill mixing in with a full chorus of peepers.
How can I sleep with so much to listen to and experience?
