New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

A parade of satellites and a parade of drake wood ducks.

Tuesday 04/19/2005

Over the next two weeks or so, wildlife biologist, like me, will be fanning out across New Hampshire to conduct our annual spring surveys of nesting waterfowl, turkeys and grouse, woodcock and mourning doves. The turkey/grouse survey needs to be done beginning a half hour before sunrise as does some of the waterfowl nesting plot surveys.

I do several of each and today I began my waterfowl nesting plot survey, the one along Baboosic Brook in Merrimack. This one requires me to be on site a half hour before sunrise.So I got a real early start on the day today. Make that an 04:00 start! The sky was perfectly clear as I approached the Fish and Game vehicle to be on my way. I took a second to gaze up at the star lit sky. A brilliant satellite was zooming by directly overhead north to south. Seconds later another followed the same trajectory, but this one was even more brilliant. A good omen to my day I thought. ( I looked them up this afternoon on heavensabove.com. The first was a portion of a Russian spent cosmos rocket and the second was a US spy satellite the Lacross-3, launched 10/24/97)

I actually arrived a few minutes early. Hey, days like this I just can't wait to get out there. But I was in place as usual by the big white pine tree overlooking the upper section of the brook as my watch ticked to 05:29 the official start. In perfect timing a pair of mallards splashed into the still darkened water directly front of me. The rest of the morning went equally as well.

05:44- a big splash in the brook twenty yards away had me quickly turning my head. A mostly white snowshoe hare swam the brook, then bounded downstream, past me in a big hurry. I saw nothing chasing it. But seconds later another splash in the exact spot in the brook left a drake wood duck for me to admire (and count).

05:48- Three geese come honking my way and settle into the brook 35 yards away. As it got a little lighter I could see why there were three. A forth was setting the whole time on the beaver lodge directly in front of me downstream a bit. It was just too dark to see her before.

06:20 I had moved downstream a few hundred yards and was studying the now fog covered back channel when a soft whistling call announced a parade of wood ducks coming downstream not ten feet from me. Four drakes led the group with a hen picking her way down stream with the males whirling around her like whirly gig beetles.

06:28- The tall white pines across the meadow are lit with a crown of sunshine that is now dappling the forest floor as I walk through some tall white oaks.

06:32 and 06:33 Two mallard drakes softly announce their presence on two beaver ponds as I skulk by them. I spend more time studying the larger cattail filled marsh from my lookout between a forked red oak tree;another familiar tree.

07:10 Despite studying the largest wetland for a while nothing more appears, although things seem to appear out of nowhere from this marsh most of the time.

07:33 I am three-quarters of the way around the circle of wetlands when I spot a hen turkey making her way across a grassy opening. As I move closer to the scrub-shrub wetland at the next site a female wood duck squeals her call and vanishes into the direct sunlight. Probably a pair of ducks, but the lack of confirmation by sight will discount this duck in the tally for the morning.

08:00 to 08:36- I complete the search of all possible wetlands in the one kilometer square assigned plot and take a quick drive into a new development just completed along the eastern side of the brook. Another drake mallard sits in a detention pond in the development. Add another pair to my tally I mentally instruct myself since I had already completed the form.

I conducted a second plot survey in Londonderry staring around 10;00 am. There I only determined there to be one mallard and one wood duck nesting pair. I did hear my first toad trilling for the year. I found a breeding pair of toads in a little vernal pool high on a sand banking overlooking the several acre beaver pond.

By early afternoon the temperatures had climbed to summer-like conditions. The air was pungent with the smell of fresh warm earth. It was another magnificent day!