New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
A partridge out my window and bountiful wildlife to be seen.
Friday 11/13/2015
Closing in on Thanksgiving I can't help but see all the bounty around me and express my thankfulness.
Just a couple of days ago as I sat here at my computer a glance out my window that rainy day showed a partridge picking the fruit off the highbush cranberry shrub I planted years ago. My crab apple trees I planted are also loaded with fruit so I'm hoping to see more of my local partridge. Heading to Concord the other day I had to pull over before entering the state road to just soak the sight in. For across the highway in the now cut corn field was a flock of 40 turkeys flanked by more than a dozen geese. In fact I see turkeys practically every day, indeed I spotted a flock in the field across from my house just yesterday.
I have been saying for years that we are living in the "Golden Years of Wildlife". And in fact I had a slide program to that regard I gave to the public the last decade or more of my Fish and Game career.
While climate change maybe whittling away at our moose population now down to about 4,000 from 7,500 a dozen years ago most species have held their numbers or have grown. Our milder winters as a result of climate change has meant an ever increasing number of deer. Now pegged by Fish and Game at over 100,000.
It sure wasn't this way 50 years ago. There were NO turkeys in New Hampshire. There were fewer than a 100 moose and even the deer population was estimated to be only 40,000. Geese? Well there were some geese. That is if you want to count the lines of V's in the sky as the migrated south. And there was a couple thousand that arrived late fall to overwinter on Great Bay.
Even animals like beaver and raccoons were not all that plentiful. In fact there were season limits on how many a trapper could take of beaver and hunters could take of raccoons. Mallard ducks were a rare bird.
No bald eagles or ospreys or falcons or common terns. Now we have something like 25 pairs of nesting eagles, 50 osprey nests and over 2,000 pairs of terns.
Yes there is so much to be thankful for.
