NATURE MONCTON NATURE NEWS
August 10, 2025
Nature Moncton members as well as
any naturalist in New Brunswick or beyond are invited to share their photos and
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courtesy of Louise Nichols at nicholsl@eastlink.ca
(Editor’s note: The Gadds have had a surprising
number and variety of birds attracted to this ‘waterfall’ setup on their
Miramichi deck. The setup is one fully described by Julie Zinkefosse from Bird
Watchers Digest, with the arrangement and items needed. A description of how
to set up is available at https://warblerfall.com/.
A small submersible pump (available from Amazon) is needed. This is obviously a very effective setup as the diversity and variety of birds the Gadds have seen using the setup include many birds that you would never expect to arrive to your deck.
It takes some planning, but it is obviously very worth it.
Also, take note of the very different fall plumage of the bay-breasted warbler.)
**Back in July, on a walk behind Crandall
University with Cathy Simon, Brian Stone noticed a small (1.6 cm) wasp hopping
around on the ground in an odd way. He took photos, and as he was finally
getting around to processing them yesterday, he noticed the wasp was
carrying around a winged ant. He had it identified on BugGuide, and it
turned out to be a square-headed wasp (Aphilanthops frigidus), sometimes
called the eastern ant queen kidnapper, as it flies around looking for winged
queen ants that it preys on and stores in its nest as food. Brian sends links
to the information pages on BugGuide.
https://bugguide.net/node/view/2481496#3947090
https://bugguide.net/node/view/39191
On Saturday, early evening, Brian Stone
noticed increased activity at his kitchen window where a female European
wool carder bee is nesting in the frame of the window.
The bee was bringing in bits of material to construct or finish
construction of her nest and was making so many trips so quickly that it was
almost like there were two of them. Brian made a video that shows three visits
of the bee to the nest and shows that the bee must be collecting material from
close at hand. Brian also made a few still images from the video that freeze
the action for closer inspection.
Nelson Poirier
Nature Moncton
