New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
Finally we flew!
Monday 01/17/2005
We finally got into the air for the annual NH waterfowl mid winter coastal survey on Saturday. Thank goodness we opted for the next flyable day, which happened to be Saturday, as the weather has turned sour again. What a glorious day for flying.
My notes pinpointed the exact moment of takeoff from the Concord Airport at 8:26 AM with pilot Dick Meyer from Concord Aviation at the controls of the Cessna 172. Immediately I noticed that we were taking off on the snow/no-snow line of NH. Off towards the North and West the ground, including the fields, looked pretty well covered with snow. But below us as we turned Eastward to follow along Route 4 the fields were essentially bare. Thursday night into Fridays hard rain event had set winter back once more.
We approached Great Bay from the Southwest, as usual, per my directions to the pilot. I have flown the annual winter waterfowl survey since about 1990 or maybe even 1989. Since 1994, Julie Robinson has been the other Fish and Game observer. Julie concentrates on counting the waterfowl, calling them into my ear via the headset. I record the numbers on a sheet, one for Great Bay, another for the Isle of Shoals, the coastline and one for the Hampton Marshes. I also navigate the trip and make sure we cover all open water but do not duplicate our counts. I have to constantly keep track in my head of were we are, where we have been, which flocks of geese have been counted from Julie's perspective all the while as the plane dips and turns round and round as I write the numbers down.
As we approached the Bay it was obvious that there was practically no ice and all the river converging on the Bay were free of ice as well. I immediately determine our strategy for Saturday's flight. We dashed up the Squamscott River all the way to Exeter as it was all open, save for a patch of ice with a gap in the center in town by Swazey Park. Back to the South end of the Bay we began a counter clock-wise trip around Great Bay itself. Since Julie is in the front right seat she needs to scan right. I coached the pilot down to 200 feet and just far enough off the shore to count the bunches of geese tucked along the shore line. Julie began to fire numbers at me: "Twenty geese, five geese, thirty geese, eight black ducks, fifty geese 'closure to the shore', twelve geese, holly smokes, a hundred geese." The plane dipped and turned, sometimes gut wrenching turns, to stay over water and away from the houses along the shore. We skimmed the mocha-colored water as the tide receded. It took three complete revolution of Great Bay to close the gaps to be sure we had covered the expanse of open water with side trips up the Lamprey and Oyster Rivers as well. Small groups of geese were just about every where! We counted scattered clumps of 10, 20, 6, 50; soon three rows of numbers lay on the clipboard on my lap.
The trip down the Piscataqua River was less eventful as we had to gain altitude for our trip over the city. I called to the pilot for a glance at Back Channel to check for the mute swans that are supposed to be wintering there. Then the pilot pulled back on the yoke hard and gave the Cessna full throttle to climb to 3,500 feet before we peeled hard further east and headed out to the Isle of Shoals.
We again spiraled down but only to 400 feet at the Isles and began a methodical search of each rocky foam-covered island jutting from the cold steel-gray sea. Here we found numbers of large-sized eider ducks dodging the swells as they broke over the granite fingers clasping the cold sea. Males are huge white speckles, while the brown females are hardly discernable. By our count, 80 seals lay basking on the exposed ledges on the lee side of the Northern island.
We spiraled back up to 3,500 feet, preferring I suppose that we crash land on some ragged granite patch rather than be swallowed by the even more unforgiving cold sea, if our engine should fail.
New Hampshire's short coastline ravels off rather quickly from the air with only a few diving ducks usually noted. Scoters are hard to see, even at low altitude, as they tend to dive underwater for extended periods making them a low count duck despite seeing numbers from a shore view. We did count a few golden eyes too. We swung in over several of the salt marches which were completely devoid of ice and snow. I can't remember a year since I started the survey that has been as free of ice and snow as this one.
The Hampton Marshes provided a low count despite their open condition and a low tide that should have revealed numerous black ducks as it has in years past. They simply were not there Saturday. I think there is so much open water in the rivers and even bare fields that the ducks were scattered this year and not concentrated along the coast as is normal for early January. The goose counts seemed normal but the mallard and black duck count was low by my recollection.
As we gained altitude back up to 2,500 feet I slumped back into the rear seat as the intensity of the morning gave way to a relaxing cruise. The Pawtuckaway Mountains, the remains of a long dormant volcano, framed my view to the North, then Fort Mountain in my town of Epsom, protruded starkly against the winter sky as we glided over the huge expanse of Bear Brook State Park before pitching down then landing gracefully back at the Concord Airport before 11:00 AM.
