New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff
Birds and frogs and toads and more galore.
Monday 05/23/2022
Wow. Just wow. Isn't spring amazing! Seems like everything is percolating right now. Birds by day singing and calling and dashing about. Look anywhere outside for a few moments and you will see something moving. Birds are hatching out their chicks by the minute. Which mean it's feeding time dawn to dark. If you are in the country and glance out a window for a minute or two you will see something happening. There is constant movement all around us. Let alone the sweet sounds to vacuum up as well.
And less noticeable, but it is still there, are all the grounded animals doing the same for their young. Tucked away in thickets or dens, are all their young of year, who in another couple of weeks will start venturing forth as well. There is so, so much going on all around us right now. New Hampshire is literally quivering with life.
I did set outside on my deck last evening. Just before dark a thunderstorm swept past to the north. Then a half hour later another to the south. Distant thunder. But what was thundering all around me were the tree frogs. The trees surrounding my house were filled with tree frogs. As they were nine days ago when they swept by my house on the way to the wetlands down back in the meadow next to the Suncook River. I figured last night's show was them retreating back past my house to the forest beyond. I was immersed in frogs and distant thunder. going into the night.

You know it wasn't always that way. Pollution, dams and overfishing pretty much eliminated alewives from all New Hampshire rivers over a hundred years ago. Oh, there may have been a few thousand in the very lower stretches of the coastal rivers. It was the Clean Water Act of the early 70's that brought about our much cleaner waters. And it was in the late 1960's into the early 1970's that the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department began to build fish ladders along our coastal rivers and began restoring the alewives. Not until the 1990's were alewives restored in numbers to our larger rivers such as the Merrimack River. An operation still going on this spring. I couldn't help but think about some of the early New Hampshire Fish and Game Department fisheries biologist, along with some Federal Fisheries biologists who brought this about. Names like Phil Wightman, Bill Ingham, Jon Greenwood and Federal folks like Al Knight and Larry Stolte come to mind. Tireless workers for decades to make the restoration happen. On the eve of Memorial Day, I visited Phil Memorial Stone on the banks of the Merrimack River at Sewall's Falls in Concord the other day. A little soap and water and a bit of brushing brought out the letters once more. I loved his cackling laughter. Hey Phil. Thanks.
Previous Note
2022-05-22
NEW HAMPSHIRE FISH AND GAME DEPARTMENT DEER BIOLOGIST BECKY FUDA.