Josh Megyesy and NH Fish and Game
TOP: Be on the lookout for road-crossing painted and snapping turtles between mid-May and mid-June around the Valley. Valley residents have taken it upon themselves to help warn motorists. These signs, in particular, were donated by the White Mountain Independents. BOTTOM LEFT: The pickerel frog’s vocalizations sound just like a snore. BOTTOM CENTER: Peepers, often no bigger than a fingernail, tend to get louder as spring temps get warmer. BOTTOM RIGHT: Wood frogs will stop clucking as you approach, but if you remain still, they will eventually restart their clucking pursuit of their mates.
presented me with a recently found wood turtle shell on a visit. The shell became my school show-and-tell item shortly thereafter. These gorgeous wood turtles used to be relatively common along slow-moving rivers and streams and their adjacent fields and forests throughout New England. Myriad factors, including habitat loss and change, have significantly reduced their numbers. In the Upper Saco River Valley of Conway and adjacent towns, wood turtles are “not doing well,” according to Josh Megysey, a wildlife biologist with New Hampshire Fish and Game. In the Upper Saco Valley, Megysey says, “Many of the suitable stream habitats used by wood tur tles have been heavily used for recreation for many decades. Areas that were once traditional nesting point bars in streams have become popular canoeing/tubing/ camping/swimming areas.” Wood turtles, like painted and snap ping turtles, are tied to rivers and streams. The sandy point bars that form from the carried sediments of slow rivers like the Saco are prime nesting spots. Even in con servation lands, human recreational use is closely followed by raccoons, skunks, and pet dogs that dig up and destroy wood turtle nests. People sometimes take them home as pets or poach them for sale on the black market. Because of this, it is essential never to make specific nest sites or frequent sighting areas of wood turtles public information through social media or other means. It is shameful that some seek to profit by removing this creature from the wild ille gally, never to reproduce, as their numbers decline. Wood turtles are still in our area, though, and are occasionally spotted as far upstream in the Saco watershed as the lower Ellis River. Wood turtles are doing bet ter with less development and recreation pressure north of the White Mountains.
The spring peeper is indeed a tiny frog, light brown with a distinctive brown “x” marking on its back. (Hence the crucifix reference in its Latin name, Hyla crucifer I remember my delight as an adolescent upon finally finding my first spring peeper in the glare of my flashlight. The frog was no bigger than my fingernail! As I quickly let it go to rejoin its own kind, I marveled that such a loud sound could come from creatures so small. Unlike the peeps that come from an individual spring peeper, a chorus of thousands of them creates a jingle often compared to the sounds of sleigh bells. And as the spring nights get warmer, the louder the peepers get. This vigorous chorus emanating from a wetland on a warm April or May night with moonlight shimmering over water will make you feel ever so intensely alive and present.
About the same time as the peepers start their chorus, the duck-like clucking of the larger wood frogs starts to sound from socalled vernal pools that form in the forest here and there in spring. Many a person has heard this sound and never equated it with the sound of a frog. The clucks of the wood frogs are fleeting, though, only lasting for a week or two. Before you know it, the wood frogs have mated, laid eggs, and then hopped back into their forest habitat. This spring, make a point to listen for the wood frogs clucking whenever you are in or at the edge of low-elevation woods
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