Nature Moncton Nature
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**Last weekend, Gwen Clark
and Jessica Belanger-Mainville went birding in Salisbury because it was a bit
too cold and windy on the coast. The number of species was low, but that is
expected at this time of the year. They saw quite a few ducks, including green-winged
teals, hooded mergansers, northern shovelers, and lesser scaups.
On Monday, Gwen and Jessica decided to try for the scissor-tailed flycatcher spotted on Sunday in Cape Tormentine, but they did not find it. It was quite windy, and the homeowner hadn't seen the bird since Sunday. They did, however, see many sea ducks, which is quite exciting! They also saw some very late semipalmated plovers and a sanderling.
Shannon also photographed
the head-still-flowering area of the very hardy, tall moth mullein plant.
A broad-headed beetle caught her eye, along with an interesting cloud formation floating by.
**When Jane LeBlanc drove
down the road at high tide (in St. Martins), she stopped to check out a flock
of Canada geese, hoping to see what else was with them, and scared up a great
blue heron that had been hiding in the tall grass. Later she found a ruffed
grouse enjoying the sunny day. She also sends a photo of a hairy
woodpecker in her yard, enjoying peanut butter in a feeder made by her
husband Ed out of a log which would have otherwise ended up in their furnace.
**Brian Coyle was checking
his trail camera route recently and was pleased to find a river otter
putting on a dramatic show during the day that Brian felt was very suggestive
of territory marking. The first series of links below show the river otter on
its mission.
The link below shows a mink
that came to check out the area the river otter appeared to claim.
**We don’t very often get to see a bird in the hand to look at ID features.
Jamie Burris found a bird brought down by a
window strike that was lethal to the bird but did no damage to the plumage. We thought
it was a hermit thrush, but some features made us uncertain.
A consultation with Gilles
Belliveau gave some helpful information we all can learn from, and those
comments from Gilles are paraphrased below:
The first photo shows
several rusty-colored tail feathers. Not sure why they don’t all appear rusty
though.
The pale spots on the
median and greater coverts are typical of first- or hatch-year birds, and we
often see them in the field when we find hermit thrushes in the fall.
Gilles provides a link to
a page he came across with some info on aging hermit thrushes while
looking for info on tail coloration to see if he could find anything explaining
why some of the rectrices might be different colors.
https://www.migrationresearch.org/mbo/id/heth.html#menu
Some of the photos do show
tails with little to no rusty colouration, and Gilles knows that he has seen birds in
the field that don’t appear to have rusty tails unless the light hits the tail
right.
**Jamie Burris got two photos of an American robin showing leucistic/albinistic features. Jamie comments that they are blurry
because he shot before checking the settings on his camera, which was
disappointing for him, but the melanin misfires show well.
Jamie also got some very
distant photos of two crows mobbing a sharp-shinned hawk.
**Brian Stone joined Cathy
and Isabelle Simon on a walk along the Sussex Bluff Trail on Saturday and
enjoyed the mild, sunny weather and wonderful scenery. Wildlife sightings were
few, but scenery was plentiful. A few woodland birds were heard along the trail
but were hidden from view by the forest. A couple of crows and a raven were
seen at a distance too far for photography. While resting at the scenic bluff
lookout, Cathy spotted a tiny critter moving along the rock face that Google
suggests was a horned passalus beetle larva.
(Editor’s note: If correct,
this larva lives on the cellulose of wood that has to be processed by an adult
beetle before the larva can digest it!)
Brian managed to keep his
footing on top of the cliff face well enough to be able to return home, where he checked out Mapleton Park with his objectively provable better half, Annette, to
get a few hooded merganser and hybrid mallard duck photos. Other
items noted were a couple autumn meadowhawk dragonflies and a white-breasted
nuthatch. A final photo was the 98% waning gibbous Moon hovering in
the early morning sky of Tuesday, Oct. 27.
Nelson Poirier
Nature Moncton
