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The camera on the peregrine
falcon nest box on the summit of Assumption Place is now live. When
checking the link to watch the activity, scroll down to the first large image,
which shows what is happening in real time.
The male and female take
turns incubating the eggs almost constantly now. The female is on the nest most
of the time, but the male always seems to be ready to give her short breaks so she can leave the precious cargo.
Action may seem quiet, but
one can be assured that action within the developing embryos is proceeding at
full speed.
https://www.zoodemagnetichillzoo.ca/nest-cam
**Jane LeBlanc saw one of
her first tree swallows of the year when walking her dog near the marsh
(and a bird house put up by Ted Sears).
She still has four yellow-rumped
warblers in her yard. One seems to have more muted colours, so she assumes
it is either a female or a juvenile.
**On April 17th, Edmund
Redfield and colleagues got a good look at this year's run of rainbow smelt
on the Petitcodiac River. It wasn't as spectacular as in 2021 when there was a
cloud of gulls overhead, preying on the smelt, and moving upstream
along with them just behind the tidal bore. That said, it was a better run than
we have seen in recent years. In the attached photos, you can see a fair
number of smelt silhouetted against the river bottom, and their identity was
verified with a dip net. Edmund’s group was angling adult salmon as part of our
acoustic tagging effort, which were feeding on these smelt, to recondition
before heading out to sea. That being the case, this provided nice
documentation of the interaction between salmon and this important forage
species.
**Brian Stone took
advantage of the warm, sunny weather on Thursday to go for a drive and a walk
along the Taylor Rd. in Second North River. He saw some new and
interesting subjects and got photos of almost all of them. A woodcock and a
broad-winged hawk were seen but they both evaded the camera. The woodcock was
nearly stepped on before it flew up, and both the bird and the photographer
were strongly startled. The nature that did get photographed included a vocal blue-headed
vireo, a turkey vulture that flew up suddenly from the side of the
road and got "panic photo’d" from the car window, a northern azure
butterfly and a green comma butterfly (yay!), a leopard frog, a banded killifish and a spiky tachinid fly. In a rut on one
of the wood roads, a few clusters of yellow-spotted salamander eggs were
displaying visible embryos.
**This Week’s Sky at a
Glance, 2026 May 2 – May 9
In the second century BCE the Greek astronomer Hipparchus of Nicaea ranked the
stars according to their brightness in six categories called magnitudes (for
greatness). The 20 brightest stars were rated first magnitude and the faintest
stars were sixth magnitude. This system was retained for two millennia and
standardized in the 19th century when much fainter stars were being detected by
telescopes and astrophotography. English astronomer Norman Pogson devised a
logarithmic system whereby five magnitudes was a difference in star brightness
of exactly 100 times. With this system, a magnitude 1 star is about 2.5 times
brighter than a magnitude 2 star, and that one is 2.5 times brighter than a
star of magnitude 3.
For many of us, the faintest star we can detect with the naked eye in a dark
sky is sixth magnitude (commonly called mag 6). Vega, the fifth brightest star,
is mag 0, slightly dimmer than Arcturus and slightly brighter than Capella.
With the ability to measure the exact brightness of stars, their magnitudes are
often recorded to one or two decimal places, and negative values are used for
very bright objects. Sirius is mag -1.4, Jupiter is usually around mag -2.4 and
Venus around -4.5. The full Moon is mag -12.6, approximately 400,000 times
fainter than the Sun at -26.7. A first magnitude star, of which there are 22,
is brighter than mag 1.50; a second magnitude star shines from mag 1.50 to
2.49, and so on.
This Week in the Solar System
Saturday’s sunrise in Moncton is at 6:04 and sunset will occur at 8:28, giving
14 hours, 24 minutes of daylight (6:11 and 8:31 in Saint John). Next Saturday
the Sun will rise at 5:54 and set at 8:37, giving 14 hours, 43 minutes of
daylight (6:01 and 8:40 in Saint John).
The Moon is near Antares on Sunday morning and it is at third quarter next
Saturday. Venus sets around 11 pm this weekend, followed by Jupiter a few hours
later. On Friday evening, May 8, telescope users might see a double shadow
transit of Jupiter’s moons Ganymede and Europa between 9:45 and 10:26. This
weekend Saturn rises an hour before sunrise followed by Mars ten minutes later.
Mercury is lost in morning twilight, moving into the evening sky later this
month. Early risers might see a few shooting stars from the Eta Aquariid meteor
shower on Wednesday.
The Saint John Astronomy Club meets in the Rockwood Park Interpretation Centre
this Saturday at 7 pm. Tune in to the Sunday Night Astronomy Show at 8 pm on
the YouTube channel and Facebook page of Astronomy by the Bay.
Questions? Contact Curt Nason at nasonc@nbnet.nb.ca.
Nelson Poirier
Nature Moncton
Mag 1 stars morning
