New Hampshire Nature Notes
by Eric Orff

Wow, another late summer day still way more summer like in the 80's than you'd expect on the cusp of fall. This cannot be The Indian Summer, as we have not yet started to cool.

Oh, how I love to set here in the evening in my office chair reading emails and fiddling with the computer while my real focus is shoved toward the window as I have so often done. Here I watch the last of this day's sun slowly climb the huge white pine across the road from my house. Almost as if one , should they too want, climb this towering pine. Limb, by limb. One branch at a time is climbed by the sun. Then, rather suddenly, the sun vanishes. And suddenly too, the once bright branches turn almost black silhouetted by the pale blue sky. And just like that, another day has slipped away. Such wonderful late summer days. Just drifting days.

Funny how we cooked in July with a record 11 days in a row over 90 degrees. Then came August. Do you remember August? I don't much. We had 80-degree days, just like we are having now, but the nights didn't cool as much as now. Wide open window nights.

Well, I've now taken four trips to the New Hampshire coast to look for migrating Monarch butterflies which I have been doing for about two decades now. And I report my observation to my followers. And get their observations. In several hours of observations there I have not seen one. None! This is NOT normal. Nor have I seen even a single one here at my house this year. Early September I usually have a few passing through. None this year. And ask any of my neighbors, I spend a lot of time outside my house. Observing Nature. Boy, am I worried.

And today I had a huge hatch of dust-sized flies in a swarm around my back yard. Some years when this happens big numbers of dragon flies move in to feed in the clearing over my house. And now that I'm thinking of it, dragon flies too have been pretty sparse around here this summer. And only but one June Bug here on the screen inches from me at this keyboard. Just one! Ha. I'm seeing a local pattern here. Where are the bugs?

Although my rain gauges have only needed a shake to empty out lately, hardly worth noting in my diary. Things are kinda dry. The ground was like powder down at the garden a couple days ago when I dug some potatoes. The brook between here and there is trickling. I think. This will require an investigation tomorrow. Ya, we could use a good dose from a left-over hurricane. We've always been satisfied with the left-over rain. It is kind of them to ring out the blow before it gets here though.

I can tell you one thing. I think the colors are coming on a week or more early. Boy, this is still just after mid-September and geeze,  there is an aful lot of color around already. Let alone up North. My advice is to get out and start looking and get the jump on the leaf peepers who will be here soon enough, hopefully before a good thunderstorm event strips the colored leaves.

You know, even though it still feels like summer many, if not most of our summer birds have fled New Hampshire. The last ten days and the next will have much life leave us to our winter without them. This week, the teens of September brings on the rush of hawks to pour across and from here as they all wheel about the sky and dance southward. This is another dynamic time of year. The fall rush to flee winter. And for us not fleeing our rush time is about to begin as a frost scraped windshield will get the last of the wood undercover.

And last, but not least, is my announcement here that my first book has been published! The big official release day is Friday October 25th at the Society For the Protection of NH Forest. Starting at 4pm. Come and get a signed copy of What's Wild.