NATURE MONCTON INFORMATION LINE, Feb, 22 2021 (Monday)
To respond by email, please address your message to
the information line editor, nelsonpoirier435@gmail.com
Please advise the editor at nelsonpoirier435@gmail.com if any errors are noted in wording or photo
labelling.
For more information on Nature Moncton, check the
website at www.naturemoncton.com
Edited by: Nelson Poirier nelsonpoirier435@gmail.com
Transcript by Susan Richards susan_richards@rogers.com
Info Line #: 506-384-6397 (384-NEWS)
**Official Spring is now less than one month away;
days are getting longer, and the sun is getting brighter. Mother Nature’s community is taking notice.
**Andrew Darcy visited the Tantramar Marsh area on Sunday to try and catch
up with the owls, and it paid off. He finally got his first New Brunswick SNOWY
OWL! They are much more abundant it seems in Ontario, where he recently moved
from from, so it was an absolute pleasure to see one here. He was quite excited
to see one perched on a fence post right beside the road. It was quite distant,
but he did manage to get a few photos before it flew back into the field. He
almost could not believe his eyes at first when he saw the white ghostly shape
from a distance. The marsh was much more productive Sunday than the last time he
visited. He saw 2 ROUGH-LEGGED HAWKS (light morph) and was able to take some
decent photos of the first individual which he suspected was a female (pale head,
little to no mottling on wings and a dark belly patch). I also encountered an
adult BALD EAGLE perched in a conifer tree at the side of the road, but it
spooked and ended up getting a distant photograph in another tree. Andrew spotted
2 RING-NECKED PHEASANTS around the same area and one was an adult male that
scurried away while the other immature male gave good views roadside (note lack
of white collar around neck area). I also spotted some SNOW BUNTINGS,
several AMERICAN CROWS, a few HERRING GULLS, some ducks he could not identify
for certain and a rather large flock of smaller birds that looked like
blackbirds but hard to say as Starlings are in that area.
Finally, on the way home in Sackville area, he was surprised to find a
flock of close to 100 HORNED LARK which also had a few LAPLAND LONGSPUR mixed
in. The birds were flying from the field to a nearby pile of hay and compost
from a farm and were busy sorting through it looking for food. I also saw a few
large MEADOW VOLES within this pile as well.
**I would like to share some CANADA JAY [Mésangeai du Canada] activity. I
reported earlier about Romeo Doucette in the Chelmsford area near Miramichi of
up to 8 Canada Jays at a time coming to his yard to feed on meat /bone/fat
mixture sourced at a local butcher shop as the sawdust from meat cutting. I had never seen so many Canada Jays coming
to a feeder yard. I checked with Romeo
on Sunday. He said the numbers had cut
down to half or less recently and not as frequent. This would be expected as the Canada Jays are
nesting now and the male only searching out food including its own cached
stores to feed the brooding female.
Romeo commented he broke the sawdust mixture into small chunks after the
very cold nights and they seem to find it easier to grab pieces and go, which I
assume they would much rather do now instead of feeding on site as the birds
were. It will be very interesting to see
if the adults bring their young to Romeo’s offering.
Nelson Poirier,
Nature Moncton
No comments:
Post a Comment