NATURE MONCTON INFORMATION LINE, September 02, 2021 (Thursday)
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Edited by: Nelson Poirier nelsonpoirier435@gmail.com
Transcript by: Brian Stone bjpstone@gmail.com
Info Line # 506-384-6397 (384-NEWS)
** Clara Thaysen has an interesting tidbit
of information to add about the banded RING-BILLED
GULL that Frank Branch saw near Caraquet. The location where it was banded
in Varennes, Quebec, is one of the largest Ring-billed Gull colonies in the
world. She believes that during certain years there are some 60,000 individuals
on an island that is about 3 square kilometers. Clara knows this because she
did a project on these gulls during her undergrad. She was at the University of
Toronto but her supervisor had a collaborator at UQAM who studies the long term
health of that gull population. They were looking at the relationship between
plastic ingestion and chemical exposure to the gulls. Clara got to visit the
island too … it was very loud!!
Clara Thaysen is now with us in New
Brunswick working with the New Brunswick Environmental Network.
** Sue Richards forwards 2 pictures of
Tuesday night’s last evening walk with Nature Moncton. There were 9 participants
with oat cakes and iced tea served to celebrate the weekly walks. They walked
on the trails to the dike and then as far as the Ducks Unlimited Pond at Taylor
Village. They saw Wood Duck boxes, Swallow/Bluebird boxes, ducks, DOUBLE CRESTED CORMORANTS, a frog,
sparrows, a flock of ducks flying over the Memramcook River, an aboiteau, a
marshland with cattails and less marshy fields of JOE PYE WEED, fall wild ASTERS
(purple and white), tall grasses, more little sparrows in the marshy field,
then the mosquitoes got the best of them and they turned back and walked up the
access road back to the Richards home.
** Bob Blake keeps daily weather
statistics from his Second North River home. Bob was away 6 days in August so
just leaves general comments comparing August of 2020 to August of 2021. He
notes that it was much warmer in August 2021 when compared to August 2020. The
precipitation comparison was double with 64 mm of precipitation in August of
2020 and 128 mm in August of 2021.
Brian Stone is still in Dartmouth
and drove out to Lawrencetown Beach and MacCormack's Beach at Eastern Passage
on Wednesday and got a few photos.
He photographed a WILLET on the
beach.
A COMMON EIDER was
enjoying a crab lunch with the usual gulls present. It soon will be time to
start taking more note of gulls as the young-of-the-year will start to take on
their 1st winter plumage and older immatures will be advancing to
next seasonal molt. A BIG BIRD (chopper) made a low fly-by that altered
the bird watching quickly!!
Nelson Poirier,
Nature Moncton
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