Nature Moncton Nature News: July 28 2016

** Jennifer and Woody Gilles, and David Christie, took a walk around the Mary's Point beach to the Shepody shore side scouting for sandpipers on Wednesday. They found a flock of three hundred SEMIPALMATED SANDPIPERS [Bécasseau semipalmé] on the rocky points extending into Shepody Bay as well as approximately thirty LEAST SANDPIPERS [Bécasseau minuscule]. A few WHITE-RUMPED SANDPIPERS [Bécasseau à croupion blanc] were with them, and they heard at least one BLACK-BELLIED PLOVER [Pluvier argenté] and also a few SEMIPALMATED PLOVERS [Pluvier semipalmé]. There was a grouping of molting COMMON EIDERS [Eider à duvet], and from one to possibly four GREY SEALS [phoque gris] were noted surfacing.

** Anna Tucker visited the Johnson's Mills Nature Conservancy Canada Shorebird Reserve Center on Tuesday at Johnson's Mills. It was not the tide time when the sandpipers were performing near the center, but they very much enjoyed their talk with the manager Kerry Lee Morris-Cormier. Anna sends a photo of Kerry Lee in work clothes. Note the moose pin and neck chain, no doubt symbolic of the Nature Conservancy of Canada effort to open a corridor on the Isthmus of Chignecto for moose to travel between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, along with many other species.

** Debbie Batog rescued a LECONTE'S HAPLOA MOTH from her birdbath recently. This is a medium sized moth with a colourful dark and white pattern on the forewings. The two Haploas most common in New Brunswick are the Leconte's Haploa and the Confused Haploa, which look similar at first glance.

** Many Swallows are moving about in mixed groups at the moment, and some may even be leaving us soon. Aldo Dorio got a photo of a suspected female BARN SWALLOW [Hirondelle rustique] on a utility wire with some feathering looking like a post breeding molt.

** We had a bird arrive at the feeders in company with PURPLE FINCHES [Roselin pourpré] recently that caught our attention as being different. The Purple Finch male does not take on the reddish plumage until its second Fall. We assume this was what was in progress with this bird, although we don't recall seeing this type of molt to adult plumage before. David Christie comments that he has noted Purple Finch that were female-like, but were showing increased amounts of pink coloration on the breast, crown, and rump, but not the amount of yellow and orange on this specimen, suggesting it to be an example of the variation that can occur in molting birds. I had hoped that it would return for better photos, but it only came by once late in the afternoon and was not seen again.

nelson@nb.sympatico.ca