New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
Yesterday's rain brings my gauge to 2.2 inches, and the river floods the corn field yet again as it runs brown.
Thursday 06/08/2006
Flood, flood, flood, I'm beginning to feel a little like chicken little. But I fear my fears are true. The river just has been looking very different out my home office window since the flood. Oh, yes it has constantly run brown, some days more than others. And each rain storm brings a different view, but the surface just looks different. And now I'm pretty sure I know why. It is much shallower in my view. I haven't been on the river yet, but a fellow town member Keith Cota who was at the Monday night selectmen's meeting to listen to the discussion about the river told me that the Suncook River is only 8 to 10 inches deep in the section I view from my house. It used to be several feet deep, even in the summer it was at least a couple feet deep and boats could easily travel up river to the rapids at the Swimming Hole at Short Falls. But the river bed itself has filled with sand from the pit over two miles above.
That's why just two inches of rain now are flooding the field. I can explain it by using this example. Take a cup and pour a cup of water in it. The cup is deep enough to contain the water. Now turn the cup upside down so just the very shallow bottom is up. If you pour the exact same amount of water in it now it will flow every where. The river basin has been filled with sand and now flooding will be common with even the same amount of rain. So all the houses down stream of the Suncook Breach will now be flooded much more often instead of once a decade, practically every storm my cause the river to flood these low lying homes. The river has so changed.
On the home front peepers, toads and tree frogs have been trading off the nights. Over the weekend the peepers reigned supreme in their calling. Monday's heat brought the toads into full trill and I heard peepers in the trees around my house after dark. They have begun their retreat back into the forest. By Tuesday night, it was the tree frogs who called the loudest as heard from my deck. Bull frogs occasionally belch a baritone call into the high pitched mix.
Another very interesting phenomenon I am following this week is trying to track down and see an old friend and now new neighbor. Last February I helped capture and tag ten of the fifty wild turkeys around the Pease Trade Port in Portsmouth. The very first one I grabbed out of the boxes we put them in when we processed them was a year old hen. She was tagged, fitted with a wing streamer and radio collar and released at the capture site within ear shot of I-95. Within days she disappeared. That's because she was on the move we now know. The UNH graduate student who is studying them informed me a couple days ago that she moved to Bear Brook State Park right near me! That's close to 50 miles as the turkey flies. I plan to use a radio receiver to get a glimpse of her to see if she has polts. Wildlife is always way more amazing than you can imagine.
