Nature Moncton Nature News: June 2 2016

** Some nice photos of the hen WILD TURKEY [Dinde sauvage] and her chicks that have been around Jean Renton's camp, near Coles Island, are attached. She suggests that the clutch number is six.

** Roger Leblanc was at the Riverview Marsh, scouting for the soon to be announced field trip there, when he put his scope on the Peregrine Falcon nest at the summit of Assumption Place to see what he suspected to be a female PEREGRINE FALCON [Faucon pèlerin] sitting on the nest incubating eggs. So it looks like things are going on schedule there.

** Eric Wilson points out an easy way to find the trail mentioned recently as being an excellent, close walking trail is to use the Moncton water tower as the point where the trail can be accessed on the street Twin Oaks Drive. The Ryan Rd. side is just down from Rural Estates Drive. Eric comments that a pair of GRAY CATBIRDS [Moqueur chat] are very active on the trail.

** Ray Gauvin was struck by the reflections from an eight inch solar ball sitting in his yard flower bed to create an interesting photo, which he shares.

** Georges Brun noticed fifty plus SWALLOWS on the clothes line at Winston Jones' Upper Coverdale farm on Wednesday, and lots of Swallows flying over the eastern big pond next to the Trans Aqua treatment plant in Riverview. He spotted a row of six GREAT BLUE HERONS [Grand Héron] across from the walking bridge over Hall's Creek on Wednesday evening, to create a soldierly line up.

** Brian and Annette Stone checked out the Crowley Farm Rd. BALD EAGLE [Pygargue à tête blanche] nest to find very noticeable development of the two eaglets, having lost the white down to brown feathering and becoming very active. They visited the Aboujagane River bridge area on Route 133 to see the Osprey activity there, plus a WILLET [Chevalier semipalmé] and MOON JELLIES, but no sign of the recently seen Harlequin Ducks there.

A visit by them to the Sackville Waterfowl Park gave great photos of a SWAMP SPARROW [Bruant des marais], SORA [Marouette de Caroline] Rail, PIED-BILLED GREBE [Grèbe à bec bigarré], YELLOW WARBLER [Paruline jaune], and a RING-NECKED DUCK [Fuligule à collier] pair.

** Nature Moncton will have a combined workshop and outing on Saturday morning, June 11, that is looking very interesting and timely. The complete write up is attached below.

Be Happy for Sparrows

Workshop and Field Trip with Roger Leblanc

Saturday June 11, 2016

It’s a fact that when you are starting out in birding there are some groups of birds that are harder than others to wrap you mind or binoculars around. Some beginners don’t even want to talk about flycatchers or gulls. And it’s true that some birds could drive you to get interested in plants! But there is a much easier group of birds that still gives people a lot of problems. The sparrows or LBJs (for “little brown jobs”) are birds that are relatively easy to find, don’t tend to hide that much, show fairly good field marks, and have recognizable songs. But still, identifying them will give most people a hard time at first. Why? Well as the LBJ nickname suggests they don’t have a lot of colors, they are relatively close to each other in size and there are a fair number of species to pick from.

But don’t despair -- help is on the way. Nature Moncton is offering a hands-on workshop on sparrows. Starting with a short one-hour indoor refresher on the sparrows of NB we will then head outdoors to the Riverview Marsh where we will concentrate on sparrows to try to put in practice what you have learned inside. The objective will be to find in the field as many as we can of the 7 or 8 species that can be found fairly easily in the region at this time of the year. Our own Roger Leblanc will lead this workshop / outing and will share with us the tricks of the trade that he has honed over the years for putting names on the pesky LBJ’S. Things like song, habitat, behavior and head pattern will be pointed out and studied in the hope that the LBJs will become ETCs (easy to call).

And in addition to sparrows, there are always many more other birds, including lots of waterfowl, on the marsh – so we may be surprised by other interesting species!

Saturday June 11, 8:00 to 9:00 (workshop); 9:30 to 12:00 (field)

**Workshop will be held in Community room at the Riverview Sobey’s, 1160 Findlay Blvd., Riverview

Registration with Judi Berry-Steeves at jbsteeve@nbnet.nb.ca or phone Judi at 387-4778.

Cost of workshop/field trip is $8 payable at the door . All are welcome, Nature Moncton member or not.

nelson@nb.sympatico.ca