Nature Moncton Nature News: Aug 20 2016

**GREAT EGRETS [Grande Aigrette] seem to be enjoying visits to New Brunswick over the past month. Carmella Melanson got some nice photos of one at the White Birch Ducks Unlimited impoundment near Sackville on Thursday. She watched a GREAT BLUE HERON [Grand Héron] interact with it, its arrow-straight flight profile, and monitoring its turf from a tree. This may be the same bird Louise Nichols saw there on August 10th.

**Jamie Burris watched in surprise as a CEDAR WAXWING [Jaseur d'Amérique] perched in his yard appeared to start gagging, an unusual behaviour, to eventually bring up a piece of fruit, obviously a bit oversized, or no room left in its crop to store it. He watched it hold the fruit in its beak for some time, then made another try, and down it went. Jamie comments he has read that they can store a good amount of fruit in their crops, especially in nesting season. The Cedar Waxwing is a late-season nester.

**Another day, another Caterpillar [Chenille]. Jill Greening got a photo of what we suspect to be an AMERICAN DAGGER MOTH Caterpillar [Chenille de l’Acronycte d'Amérique] recently.

**A Butterfly [Papillon] sent out in yesterday’s edition was labelled incorrectly. It should have been labelled a NORTHERN PEARLY-EYE [Satyre perlé], not an EYED BROWN [Satyre occellé]. Roger Burrows points out the Northern Pearly-Eye has the irregularly-sized eyespots, where the Eyed Brown has more uniformly-sized spots. There are other differentiating features, but this is an easy one. The photo is re-attached today.

nelson@nb.sympatico.ca

Nelson Poirier

Nature Moncton