New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
Pheasants galore and more today.
Thursday 09/29/2005
Today was the first of two days to stock ring-necked pheasant for Saturday's opening of hunting season. I stocked two hundred of the 13,500 birds to be loosed this year. And I did a first for me in the over quarter century that I have been stocking pheasants for the Fish and Game Department. I brought along radio personality Peter St. James of station WPTL in Concord. He's an avid hunter one of two of their morning radio show hosts. Peter has done a great job bringing hunting and fishing issues to the public over the years and has done lots to help our department.
I gave him a chance to release most of the birds today and we did a "live" radio piece of one of the releases! This is a first for me and probably any radio station. We had a great morning dribbling birds at several site in Hopkinton and Henniker. He's welcome anytime as we had a great time talking about lots of things outdoor and hunting related. I saw one lonely monarch butterfly today. Only my 4th or 5th for the fall.
This afternoon we had another deluge around 3:00 PM. Monday night's deluge, the remnants of Rita, topped my rain gauge at over three inches in the heavy bursts. It filled my rain gauge with water and the roads full of frogs as I navigated back from the NH Wildlife Federation meeting in Concord. The warm temperatures of the last few weeks has kept lots of frog and toad activity going. Well beyond some years. In fact my neighbor Rick says he heard a toad trilling Tuesday night along the Suncook River during his daily sunset kayak trip on the river.
No doubt we are on the verge of a major temperature shift. How long can we sustain temperatures ten to twenty degrees above average for this time of year. My guess is, when things change, it will be a shock to our system as to just how cold "normal" is for this time of year. I have not turned my furnace on yet. I pledged weeks ago to keep it off until at least October first. My friends Jean and Rick helped me install a new storm door on my front door yesterday. I have another door to replace and THEN I'll be ready for winter.
