Every guest asks us two wildlife questions: will we see a moose, and are there bears. The answers are maybe and yes, and both are less of a concern than the tiny deer tick you may never notice. The White Mountains are one of the wilder corners of the eastern United States, a national forest the size of a small state with alpine summits, boreal spruce forests and beaver-dammed valleys, and the animals that live in each zone are different. A hiker who knows what to look for sees far more of them, and behaves better around them, than one who does not.
This guide is the natural history we share with curious guests, with the numbers from New Hampshire Fish and Game and the conservation groups that count these animals: the black bears and how to keep them out of your pack, the moose and why there are fewer than there were, the peregrine falcons that came back to Franconia Notch in 1981 and now close climbing cliffs every spring, the small brown thrush that sings only above 3,000 feet, the jays that rob lunches at the huts, the loons on the lakes, and the fragile alpine plants that a careless step can damage. Then the small things: ticks, black flies and the one venomous snake in the state, which does not live here.
Our journal post on where to see moose covers the roadside drives; this is the wider picture, zone by zone and season by season, for anyone who wants to know what is moving in the woods around the trail.
Black bears: about five thousand, and how to be boring to them
New Hampshire Fish and Game estimates roughly 4,800 to 5,000 black bears in the state, and the White Mountains are their heartland. They are big, mostly vegetarian, shy of people and very good at finding food that is not put away. Encounters on the trail are common enough that most regular hikers have one story; attacks are so rare in New Hampshire that each one is news. A bear that sees you will almost always leave. The problem bears are the ones that have learned that people mean food, at campgrounds, at trailhead cars and at the bird feeders of houses on the edge of the forest, which is why the state asks residents to take feeders down from April to December.
On the trail, the rules are simple. Keep food in the pack and the pack with you, never leave a snack on a summit rock while you take a photograph, and never feed anything. If you meet a bear, stop, speak in a normal voice, make yourself look large, and back away slowly without turning your back or running; give a cub's mother a wide berth and a clear exit. A black bear that stands up or huffs is trying to see and smell you, not threatening you. In the very rare case of a black bear that follows or approaches, get loud and aggressive; do not play dead with a black bear. Bear spray is legal and rarely needed. Our hiking safety journal post covers the rest.
Moose: fewer than there were, and why
The moose is the animal everyone wants, and it is scarcer than it was. New Hampshire's herd peaked at 7,000 to 8,000 in the late 1990s and has fallen to roughly 2,500 to 3,000, and years of research by the University of New Hampshire and Fish and Game point to the winter tick as the cause. Warmer, shorter winters give the ticks more snow-free weeks to find a host in the fall, and a single moose can carry tens of thousands of them, enough to cost a calf its first winter. The moose are still here, in the boggy valleys, the beaver meadows and the roadside ditches at dawn and dusk, but a sighting is a piece of luck rather than a sure thing.
For a hiker, a moose calls for far more caution than a bear. A cow with a calf in May and June, and a bull in the rut in late September and October, will charge; the rest of the year a moose mostly wants to be left alone, and at 900 to 1,200 pounds it gets what it wants. If you see one, stop, stay quiet, keep a hundred feet or more between you, and back away if it lays its ears back or the hair on its neck rises. Never get between a cow and a calf. The place to take the most care is the road: moose stand in the highway at night on Route 3, Route 112 and the Kancamagus, dark above the headlights, and a collision is serious. Slow down after dusk. Our moose post has the drives and the etiquette.
The peregrine falcons of Franconia Notch
Peregrine falcons vanished from the eastern United States by the 1960s, poisoned by DDT, and their return is one of the region's conservation stories. In 1981 a pair nested on a cliff in Franconia Notch, the first cliff-nesting peregrines in New England since the collapse, and New Hampshire Audubon has monitored the birds ever since; the state now holds around thirty breeding territories that fledge dozens of young a year. The notch is still core habitat. Watch the cliffs from Profile Lake, the Old Man plaza or Artist Bluff in spring and summer and you may see the fastest animal on earth stoop on a pigeon over the parkway.
To protect the nests, Audubon, the state park and the Forest Service close climbing routes on the cliffs where a pair is nesting, typically Eagle Cliff and the Eaglet across the notch from Cannon, from about May 1 to the middle of July each year, and post the closures each season. Hikers on the ledges above the notch are asked to keep back from cliff edges near a nest and to leave any bird that is screaming at them. The recovery has depended on people doing that.
Above 3,000 feet: Bicknell's thrush, Canada jays and the alpine zone
The high spruce-fir forest that begins around 3,000 feet on these mountains is a piece of the Canadian north stranded on New England summits, and it has its own birds. Bicknell's thrush, a small brown thrush with a thin, spiraling song, breeds only in the stunted high-elevation conifers of the Northeast, mostly above 3,000 feet in the White Mountains, the Greens, the Adirondacks and a few Maine peaks, and birders travel from around the world to hear it at dawn on the Cannon summit trail or the upper Kinsman Ridge. It is one of the rarest songbirds in the East, and climate change is squeezing its habitat uphill.
The Canada jay, until recently called the gray jay and always called the camp robber, reaches the southern edge of its range in these same forests and is the bird that lands on your hand at Galehead, Zealand and the summit of Mount Hale. It is charming and it is a wild animal; feeding it teaches it to beg, so admire it and keep the sandwich. White-throated sparrows sing their two-note whistle everywhere up high, ravens croak over every summit, and above treeline on Franconia Ridge and the Presidentials the alpine zone holds arctic plants, tiny cushions of diapensia and alpine azalea and sedges, that took centuries to grow and can be lost under a single boot. Stay on the rock and the marked trail above the trees; the signs mean it.
Loons, beavers and the valley animals
Common loons nest on the quiet lakes to the south and a few mountain ponds, and their wail across Squam Lake at dusk is the sound of a New Hampshire summer. The Loon Preservation Committee, founded in 1975 when the birds were in steep decline, monitors and protects every nesting pair in the state and asks boaters to keep well clear of nests and chicks and to use lead-free tackle, since lead sinkers remain the leading cause of adult loon deaths here. Beavers built the ponds that so many trails cross; the Beaver Pond at Kinsman Notch, the meadows along the Zealand Trail and the wet ground at Greeley and East Pond are their work, and an evening beside any of them usually produces a beaver, a slap of a tail and a great blue heron.
The rest of the cast: white-tailed deer in the valleys, eastern coyotes heard more than seen, red foxes, porcupines that will chew a boot left on a porch, fishers, snowshoe hares that turn white in winter, red squirrels that scold from every spruce, wild turkeys in the fields toward Franconia, and brook trout in the cold streams, the state fish. Bald eagles have returned to the big lakes and rivers and are now a regular sight over the Pemigewasset.
Ticks and Lyme disease
The New Hampshire animal that deserves the most attention is one of the smallest: the blacklegged tick, or deer tick, and the disease it carries. Roughly six in ten blacklegged ticks in the state carry the Lyme bacterium, New Hampshire has one of the highest Lyme rates in the nation, and infections peak in June and July when the poppy-seed-sized nymphs are active, typically May through August. Ticks are thickest in the lower, brushier, grassier country south and west of Lincoln, around Squam, Rumney and the farm valleys; they thin out in the high spruce and are rare above treeline, which is one more argument for the summits.
Wear long pants tucked into socks in grassy country, treat clothing with permethrin or use repellent on skin, stay in the middle of the trail, and do a full tick check within a few hours of every hike, including hair, waistband and behind the knees; a tick removed within a day rarely transmits Lyme. Remove an attached tick with fine tweezers, straight out, and watch the spot for a spreading rash over the following weeks. Lincoln Urgent Care on Railroad Street sees tick bites all summer and can prescribe a preventive dose.
Black flies, mosquitoes and the one snake
Black flies are the White Mountains' spring plague, emerging in the valleys in mid-May and biting through late June, later into July at the ponds and on the high trails. They do not carry disease here; they make a still June morning by a pond miserable. Repellent helps a little, light-colored clothing helps a little, a head net solves it, and wind and altitude thin them out. Mosquitoes follow from June through August in the wet woods and fade by September, which is why September is the best hiking month in the state.
Snakes are not a worry. New Hampshire has one venomous species, the timber rattlesnake, critically endangered and confined to a single known population far from the White Mountains; the garter snakes and the occasional milk snake you may see sunning on a ledge are harmless. There are no poisonous spiders of consequence, no grizzlies, no wolves and no mountain lions with any confirmed population, whatever the bar stories say.
The wildlife calendar
April and May: bears wake and are hungry, moose calves are born, peregrines nest and the cliff closures begin, loons return to the lakes, black flies hatch in mid-May and tick nymphs emerge. June: the best month for birds, with Bicknell's thrush and the warblers singing at dawn, and the worst for black flies. July and August: bears in the berry patches on the open ledges, moose in the ponds at dusk, loon chicks on the lakes, mosquitoes in the woods. September and October: the bull moose rut, bears feeding hard on beechnuts and acorns before denning, hawks migrating along the ridges, the bugs gone. November to March: bears denned by late November, moose yarding in the spruce, tracks in the snow telling you who is still out there, and Canada jays working the huts all winter.
Where to look from the lodge
For moose, the roadside bogs at dawn and dusk: Route 112 west toward Kinsman Notch and the Beaver Pond, Tripoli Road, and the wet meadows along the Zealand Trail; our moose post has the detail. For peregrines, the cliffs of Franconia Notch from Profile Lake and Artist Bluff in spring and summer. For Bicknell's thrush and the high-country birds, the upper Kinsman Ridge Trail on Cannon or any 4,000-footer at dawn in June. For loons and beavers, Squam Lake, Echo Lake at dusk and the beaver ponds on the easy pond hikes. For bears, hope not to, and pack your lunch accordingly.
Where to stay
The lodge sits in the valley zone, and the animals show up accordingly: deer in the yard at dusk, turkeys along Pollard Road, a bear at the neighbors' bird feeder some Aprils, and a moose on Route 112 at night often enough that we mean it when we say slow down after dark. The high-country birds are 15 min up the notch at dawn, and the loons are 40 min south on Squam.
We keep binoculars in the common lounge for guests, a bird list on the shelf, and the current word on where a moose was last seen. Just message us; the answer changes weekly.
Useful links
- NH Fish and Game: black bears in New Hampshire
Population figures, the bird-feeder rule and what to do if you meet a bear. - NH Fish and Game: moose in New Hampshire
The herd's decline, the winter tick research and moose safety. - NH Audubon: peregrine falcon recovery and cliff closures
The 1981 return to Franconia Notch and the spring closures on the cliffs. - Loon Preservation Committee
How the state's loons are counted and protected, and the lead-tackle rule. - NH Department of Health and Human Services: tickborne diseases
Lyme disease in New Hampshire, prevention and what to watch for after a bite. - UNH Extension: black flies fact sheet
Which black flies bite, when they emerge and how long the season runs. - Our post on where to see moose near Lincoln
The dawn and dusk drives and the etiquette. - Lincoln Urgent Care
For a tick bite that worries you, seven days a week on Railroad Street.
Sources & official info: wildlife.nh.gov · wildlife.nh.gov · nhaudubon.org · nhbirdrecords.org · dhhs.nh.gov · wildlife.nh.gov
— Launchpoint Lodge, From the lodge
