In June, the forest echoes with bird songs and the whine of a million mosquitoes. Insect protein abounds. Plants flower and begin to set fruit. Birds are nesting, laying eggs and raising young. Turtles are nesting, laying leathery eggs in sandy soil in sunny locales.

Great Blue Herons are familiar summer residents of inland New Hampshire. As the largest of all North American herons, they can stand four feet tall.

The harmless and beautiful milk snake – formerly called a “house adder” – wears a distinctive pattern of black-rimmed brown patches along its tan body. Milk snakes eat a wide range of food from mice to other snakes. In the wild, snakes do not eat or grow during winter.

It’s a celebrated evening in April when the sheep shearer arrives. On countless New Hampshire sheep farms, spring shearing has signaled a definitive end of winter for centuries. After months of winter confinement to house and barn, both farmer and sheep are liberated.