New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

NH is getting grayer by the day. Now, I'm not talking about people getting older. It's the sky and skyline that is turning grayer by the day. Yes 2016 is growing old. Today sure is a case in point. This past week has seen the loss of many of the wonderfully colored leaves of a week ago. And today's steel gray sky just seems to add to the backdrop of the changing views. So I guess 2016 is long in tooth by late October. November always seems to be the grayest of months. Looking out at November woods it is the bare branches and trunks of the trees that catch the slanting light.

And have our temperatures changed. Just over a week ago we were flirting with a near record high temp near 80 degrees. A gaze at my thermometer now shows we are stuck in the low 40's.  Much of northern NH has had a couple of snow falls, though I have yet to see as much of a flake falling here. We have had a couple of hard frosts this week which has burned off some of the green landscape.

I've not even heard the fall call of a spring peeper this fall. Maybe that will change once I get out deer hunting in a couple weeks. Somehow these little buggers like to hang on to the year like no other frog. I don't think I'm in any rush to let go of the year yet either. We sure did have a long hot dry summer though. At least the rain we have had lately has got our local trout streams flowing again. I'm thinking it is a little to late. This was no doubt a pretty tough year on our native Brook trout and maybe even some of the aquatic insect life.