New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

The deep freeze is on.

Thursday 01/20/2005

Talk about fickle weather and temperatures. The last two weeks have had my thermometers doing push-ups constantly. They plunged below the zero mark again yesterday into last night.

I had a fight with old man winter just a few minutes ago. I simply wanted to open my home-office window to snap a picture of the white cloaked Suncook River this morning; a result of last nights dusting of sugar. But no...he held a firm grip on the frost covered storm window. I had to resort to whipping out a hair drier to coax him to back enough to release the catches on the bottom of the window. I don't know who declared him old. Perhaps he is more like Jack Armstrong. I notice my furnace has been battling with him lately too, trying to keep him from turning my house into a duplex. Such is another winter in New Hampshire.

I thought for a moment yesterday that I was watching a squirrel chase in the pines below my over-the-banking bird feeder. But it didn't last long enough for me to declare my first true sign of spring. On the way to the office, after checking on a Fish and Game Small Grant habitat improvement project in Deerfield, I swung the truck into Dole Marsh for a quick stare at the great blue heron nest that sometimes has a great horned owl nesting in it. No luck there for a shot of spring either.

So we remain locked into old man winter's grip for the time being. Wildlife is hold up as well. Even critters, like fisher, tend to lay low for several days on end when temperatures are this low. To search for food may waste more energy than simply starving a few days waiting for the weather to turn. Even fisher are optimists when it comes to a New Hampshire winter. Hey, maybe, just maybe, I'll catch my first glimpse of spring today!