New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Glorious Spring!

Sunday 04/30/2006

Spring is so fulfilling. Discoveries are just the turn of the head away or a cocked head to listen deeper into the sound level that is about you. So I frequently stop to look, listen. smell and learn. For me it is just another way of hunting. But instead of game I hunt the changes of the season.

Yesterday I peered over the banking into the "wet hole" at the base of the old Suncook Railroad bed where a wetland was created over a century ago. My neighbor, whose family goes back generations here, says it is the remnants of a clay pit used to make bricks. Cold springs boil from the deep earth constantly there feeding the meadow water at probably nearly 40 degrees all year round. So it is cool in the summer and warm in the winter relative to the area around it. Some years back I transplanted a few marsh marigolds, also called cowslips, into the edge of this wetland. They have taken off in the years hence and provide me with one of the springs first glimpses of golden yellow colors. They are one of the first wild flowers to bloom each spring. Always a welcomed sight, if I take a minute to peek down into their lair.

This morning I conducted my first grouse/turkey spring surveys. This consists of driving a designated ten-mile route each spring stopping at one-mile intervals to listen for grouse drumming or tom turkeys gobbling. There are 45 such routes scattered across NH that are run each spring either by NH Fish and Game staff, from conservation officers to wildlife and fisheries biologists, to a number of volunteers.

I heard none this morning, but there were plenty of other rewards for arising at 4:07 this morning. First of all this time of year the whole outdoors is awakening. From the many birds and bugs to the forest canopy these mornings are filled with emerging life. I can't help but jot down the other sounds of the early morning light besides the designated species. So my "comments column" on my survey form is filled with this mornings findings.

Stop one had robins and a rooster calling into the still mostly darkened sky. Wood peckers at many stops were noted as well as mourning doves, crows, Canada geese, blue jays, one crow and " 11 new houses being built in this one-mile gap along this route." That is exactly why I run this route on a Sunday. Any commute morning and the traffic drowns out all that there is to hear. So a still Sunday morning is as good as you can get. And it was! BY mid route the sun was painting the very tips of the blossoming trees yet another reward for an early morning arise.