New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Summer sounds (stillness) stripers and a new sand bar.

Friday 07/07/2006

I've been off on vacation this week. I spent the first few days and through the Fourth at my camp in Maine with family. We soon found out why it takes a village to raise a child. It was nearly a full-time job for my wife, daughter and her husband to keep tabs on my two-year old grand daughter, Katie. More villagers would have been welcomed. But what a joy it was. While I have studied wildlife all my life, studying Katie's learning curve was even more amazing. Now that she is talking, and talking, and talking, she can relate what she is learning. How wondrous it is to watch her explore new things and take it all in. An evening camp fire at lakes edge, with a bull frog bellowing very close, made me want to close my eyes to soak it all in. Katie's were bulging like a bull frog's in wonder. A loons call brought the same expression. "What was that noise?" she would exclaim. It seems that the whole world is pouring information into her sweet little head; And draining mine, it seems .

I got home in the dark Wednesday night and awoke to a very different looking Suncook River Thursday morning. There is a huge sandbar stretching nearly across the river a quarter mile up river from my house. Today I hiked up for an up-close look. The dam gates are wide open down river at the Buck Street dam and have drained the river lower here than it has ever been it seems. The low water level coupled with the huge influx of sand and silt from the breach has built up a sand bar where none has ever existed before. In fact there was four or five feet of water where in now occurs.

When I hiked up there this morning I realize it formed where the river swept over the banking into the corn field. The reduced velocity of the water dumped the sand in the river right at the top of the field. So at least the river is not full of sand the whole stretch past my house. The farmer was able to till in the sand in the corn field when he replanted, Still the corn is only a foot high, at most, instead the waist high it has been some years by this time.

I did spot several green grasshoppers in the tall grass of the hay field. Lethargic ones. I'm guessing these are the ones that survived last winter here. Normally these little green buggers can easily escape my capture by huge leaps. No doubt this year's crop of grasshoppers is soon to emerge from the adolescent stages.

It is very quiet today. Summer stillness by mid morning. No birds calling save for an occasional crow call. No summer cicadas yet. A chick-a-dee is in one of my bird houses along my patio fence. Even they hardly ever give even a scolding call. A couple of tree frogs and a bellowing bull frog or two give some life to the night air as I stand on my deck. Spring has vanished from the air.