New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
Winter is sliding in on sheets of ice.
Thursday 12/08/2005
Old man winter is sliding down the Suncook River right at me. Jagged sheets of newly formed ice are marching directly at me as I gaze out my home office window this morning. Then they are swept out of my sight by the 90 degree bend in the river little more than 100 yards from where I set. It sure is a cold looking scene as my thermometer is just creeping up from the 11 degrees it read earlier this morning. This day is very slow to warm, as have been the last couple, with the coldest nights of the year so far sealing all the smaller lakes and ponds with ice locally.
Winter seems to have definitely set in this time. The six inches of snow of Thanksgiving Day were swept away by a warm rain, then replaced yet again this last weekend with another cover of snow. Although just a couple inches here. The view for the most part is whitish with the taller greens of the fields still showing. No doubt this freeze will finally send even the grasses to bed for the winter.
The ducks that were so plentiful and obvious two weeks ago seemed to have pretty much left in early December even before the ice covered the ponds. So the wildlife scene has continued to drain from the land as well. Except for turkeys. It seems like I see turkeys practically every where every day. Small flocks of a dozen or so seem to be here and there in my travels in southeast New Hampshire.
Good news this morning as I had 3 gray squirrels around my bird feeder; Not much for reds though. At Tuesday night's NH Trappers Association meeting I was asking some of the trappers about levels of squirrels and mice in their areas. Paul Debow, who does nuisance wildlife work in the Plymouth area full time, says he has had a rash of squirrels and mice calls this fall. He thinks they are more abundant than usual in that area. So it looks like my local observations are just that. Maybe the rodents are just down around the southeast part of the state.
Certainly the small birds seem average to plentiful. I have seen about 8 or 10 blue jays at my feeder at times. Blue jays and chickadees have always been my favorite birds. I had a chickadee scold me furiously as I walked past my front bird feeder this morning coming in from the paper box. How I like to be chastised by them. What a powerful voice for such a tiny animal. I read recently that the number of times and length of the chickadee's call indicates the size of the potential predator it is seeing. So they actually warn other chickadees on the size of the threat. The birds have so much to say if we could only learn to listen.
