New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
A new year and no snow for now.
Monday 01/03/2005
The snow cometh, and the snow goeth. And such has been this fall/winter so far. Well into the 40's today with even the Merrimack River in Concord mostly opened up compared to what I saw a week or more ago. From my second story window the fields are snowless again. Even the Suncook River has opened quite a bit in front of the house, although it still looks like it is ice covered below the bend in the river. If this were March, I'd be looking for the first pair of hooded mergansers to arrive.
I was supposed to conduct the annual coastal aerial waterfowl census this morning, but the icy conditions, that lasted into this morning with fog, has postponed the census. This annual census has been conducted by the Fish and Game Department since about 1950. I have been doing the flight since the late 1980's. I always enjoy my annual flight over Great Bay, out to the Isle of Shoals, then down the sea shore and usually finishing up at the Hampton marshes. It takes three hours or so depending on ice conditions. This years lack of ice will have us searching the tributaries of Great Bay up river until we hit ice. It will be a longer census this year. So, for now, I am on-call waiting for good flying conditions. This same census is being conducted all along the Atlantic Seaboard this week, or next, from Eastern Canada to the Carolinas. Where ever wintering ducks and geese are found.
As is appropriate this first week of the year we have a tendency to look back at the last year to see where we have been and it will hopefully give us a sense of where we might be headed this year. Of coarse this excludes the weather. But I like to look at my summary of the year that I keep in the back pages of my diary to see what the year was like for weather and wildlife conditions. Here's what it says:
1) Relatively low snow year but came early and stayed until April. Long stretches of below zero temperatures.
2) Cold late spring. Long periods of cool rainy weather interspersed with a few warm to hot days with a couple of record hot days.
3) Ran my furnace into June.
4) Frogs starting to call late, stopped, then several frog species all calling at once instead of separately by species. A jumbled-up spring.
