Vibe Spring2025 - Flipbook - Page 46
Josh Megyesy and NH Fish and Game
Courtesy photo
Courtesy photo
Emily Smith-Mossman
Courtesy photo
Courtesy photo
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 turtles 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 snapping 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 conservation lands, human recreational use is
closely followed by raccoons, skunks, and
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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 illegally, 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 better with less development and recreation
pressure north of the White Mountains.
Peeping Peepers
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.
Clucking Wood Frogs
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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