Nature Moncton Nature News: February 19 2015

** Brian Coyle shares an interesting snow scenario. The RUFFED GROUSE [Gélinotte huppée] is well-known for its habit of diving into snow to stay under the blanket of warmth as winter strategy. Present snow conditions are very good for that. Brian recently came across two grouse that burst out of their snow cave near him to give the level of surprise one would expect. Brian says that he has seen the holes in the snow, where a grouse has plunged from a tree, to dig a burrow and burst out the next morning. A wing imprint appears beside one of the snow holes in Brian’s photo.

** Keree Tait noted a group of BOHEMIAN WAXWINGS [Jaseur boréal] eating crabapple fruit. She put a dish out on the snow, and put blueberries, chopped apple and banana in the dish, which the waxwings promptly came to.

I still have Bohemian Waxwings coming to my own feeder fruit tray. However, the resident NORTHERN MOCKINGBIRD [Moqueur polyglotte] is not amused and is now getting more serious about guarding the fruit cache, which it did not seem to do when the waxwings first arrived.

** George Brun noticed a raft of COMMON MERGANSER [Grand Harle] on the Petitcodiac River, just below the Gunningsville Bridge on Wednesday morning. He also thought he saw a SEAL [phoque] just below the mergansers, but was not certain. I wonder if there are any fish moving upriver at the moment. It seems very early for smelt [éperlan].

** A CHRISTMAS CACTUS burst into bloom at Brian Stone’s on Wednesday. As expected, his camera was nearby, allowing him to nicely shoot the bloom, showing the blunt female stigma below the ripening pollen on the stamens above it. If pollen is transferred from an unrelated plant with a Q-tip, berries can result. We have a cactus blooming in our own sunroom so a visit will soon be in order to play cupid.

Brian again captured a SUN HALO on Wednesday and an interesting cloud formation, also a nice under-view of a GREAT BLACK-BACKED GULL [Goéland marin] in flight to show the underside of the wings, with the black wedge along the trailing edge and the white window of P10 going right to the tip of the outer primary to differentiate it from some of the other common gull species. Also note the clean white head of the mature Great Black-backed Gull in winter. The winter adults of most other large gulls show brown head streaking.

Brian also had a flock of BOHEMIAN WAXWINGS [Jaseur boréal] in his yard crab tree, and a few PINE GROSBEAKS [Durbec des sapins] joined them.

** Greg Osowski is running a winter shelter workshop at the Atlantic Wildlife Institute in Cookville, north of Sackville, on Sunday, Feb. 22. The poster for this event is attached.

Nelson Poirier,

Nature Moncton

nelson@nb.sympatico.c