Nature Moncton Nature News: December 21 2014

** Brian Stone got several photos# of the Christmas Bird Count on Saturday. Unfortunately, Brian’s telephoto camera lens is out of commission but help is on the way. , a nice close-up of an overwintering egg mass of EASTERN TENT CATERPILLAR, some interested horse observers as we traveled the marsh, and Sadie hoping to flush a Snowy Owl.

** Jack Perry reports that two TURKEY VULTURES [Urubu à tête rouge] arrived across the road from his apartment on Sand Cove Road in Saint John. He watched two of them feasting on RACCOON [Raton laveur] road-kill on Saturday morning. Jacks comments that seeing them so close-up sure made him realize just how large the Turkey Vulture is.

** A first-time visitor to our urban feeder location arrived on Sunday; a PILEATED WOODPECKER [Grand pic] fed for quite some time on shelled, unsalted roasted peanuts, then decided to look over a yard birdhouse. It’s the first time that we’ve had a Pileated Woodpecker seriously feed at the feeders. A NORTHERN MOCKINGBIRD [Moqueur polyglotte] that is fairly regular was chowing down on the same peanut presentation in a feeder at the other end of the enclosure. Both cooperated for photos.#

** It’s a great time of year to observe tracks, trails and scats. I find the small retractable fabric tape measures are ideal to get the exact size of a footprint, the distance between them, both sidewise, that is straddle, and lengthwise, which is stride. It can sure narrow down the possibilities. Scats, as well, can be measured lengthwise and in diameter to better guess the creator. A photo of a tape measure is shown.#

We are experimenting with ways to share message and photos more widely without need for passwords or membership. This is very much in its trial stages. Test it out by going to the link http://nminfoline.blogspot.ca/. This will give the message and photos at low resolution. If you wish to see the photos at high resolution, click on the Nature Moncton Photo bucket option which will take you to the higher resolution photos of that day. In each of these sites, the message and/or photos are listed by date of send out. Clicking on the photos will make them full screen.

Nelson Poirier,
Nature Moncton