New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
Summer and fall in the same week in NH.
Tuesday 07/03/2007
Well as the old saying goes "You know when you live in NH if you use your air conditioner and furnace on the same day." Well, maybe it wasn't the same day but only a couple days apart. Going into last weekend we were running in the mid 90's, flirting with record temperatures for three days. Then the bottom dropped out of the temperatures. Monday morning it was just above 40 degrees in the early morning. Not far from frost!
The toads made a remarkable return during the heat wave wailing all day long in the meadow down back. I figured they were all done for the year. Mother Nature at work turning around a second disastrous toad breeding season in a row. Even the tree frogs were back at it in the evening. I had heard some a couple weeks before migrating back through the trees past my house, so I figured they were done for the year too.
Fire flies own the night sky now growing in numbers the last two weeks. Summer like dry conditions have set in. I was wading and fishing the Suncook River late last week and there was just a trickle flowing down river at the new rapids below Route 4 by the Epsom Circle. Where it was pinched by the rocks it was maybe 6 inches deep and 6 or 7 feet across. The river down below me is nearly still with hardly a noticeable current. Deer Brook, that ragged on April 16th sweeping out 60 yards of the road has ceased flowing almost completely. This part of NH is in a drought, though everything remains mostly green. In my travels I am seeing more deer than ever before in my life. Several in mid day in the fields. Nothing that I have ever seen before in my 45 years of living in NH. Plus road killed deer all over the highways.
A word of note. I'm in a transition period changing web masters. My web master of 3 plus years is no longer going to run this part of his business. I have selected another, but the last two weeks of no NH Nature Notes is part of the bump to change over. I'm here, just trying to figure out the change over.
