NATURE
MONCTON NATURE INFORMATION LINE, Oct. 29, 2021 (Friday)
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Edited by:
Nelson Poirier nelsonpoirier435@gmail.com
**Aldo Dorio
photographed a Common Loon of Hay
Island on Thursday. It appears like it may be molting into nonbreeding winter plumage.
The Common Loon will overwinter wherever there is open water so may not
necessarily go all that far.
Aldo also
photographed 1 of 3 Sanderlings that
surprisingly stopped long enough to pose. Sanderlings stay with us late into
the season and some will overwinter in New Brunswick.
**Unfortunately,
records of dead Tree Swallows in nest
boxes continue. Lynda LeClerc checked one box she had on the man-made lake on
the Humphrey Brook Trail in Moncton to find 3 unhatched eggs and 2 or possibly
3 dead nestlings. It sure has not been a good year for Tree Swallows in varying
habitat. Yet, others reported few dead nestlings when checking their boxes, but
the sad news seems to outweigh the good reports.
**On the
Nature Moncton Sussex Bluff Field trip, the group took note of an interesting
pattern on a dying debarked tree. In consultation with Doug Hiltz at the
Maritime School of Forest Technology, a very interesting response came back
that I am going to quote below:
Quoting
Doug:
“Those
flattened black structures are called rhizomorphs and they are indeed fungal in
nature. More specifically these are signs of a forest disease-causing fungus
called Armillaria mellea (Honey Mushroom) which causes the
disease called armillaria root rot that is most likely what killed the tree.
Interestingly, though Armillaria is a serious and often fatal tree disease, the
golden yellow fruiting bodies of this fungus are called Honey Mushrooms and are
considered a delicacy (only when cooked, raw they are toxic). The largest
living organism on earth is actually a colony of armillaria in Oregon. Anyway,
these rhizomorphs grow up from the root system under the bark of the tree to a
height of about 1.5 metres and act as a digestion/absorption mechanism for the
fungus to take in nutrients from the tree. Another name given to Armillaria is
shoe/boot lace fungus because the rhizomorphs are said to look like black
shoelaces.”
There were a lot of Honey Mushrooms found
along the trails that day.
**After
seeing several reports of LEACH'S STORM PETRELS flying through the
recent high winds along the shore in the Shediac and Cap Pele areas Brian Stone
went searching on Thursday in the hopes of finding this new for him bird. While
he was out he saw a report by Marguerite Winsor that one was present at the
wharf in Robichaud and he managed to get there in time to get a couple reasonably
decent binocular views and a documentary photo of it. Many thanks to the
Winsors for their help in locating it. At the same location a RED-THROATED
LOON was near enough for a better photo in the high, wind driven waves. The
only other photo target was a large flock of COMMON EIDERS that passed
in the distance.
**It’s Friday and time to check on what next week’s night sky will have to peruse courtesy of sky guru Curt Nason:
This
Week’s Sky at a Glance, 2021 October 30 – November 6
Open clusters, sometimes called galactic clusters, are groups of relatively
young stars (usually less than 500 million years old) that formed from the same
vast cloud of gas and dust. The Pleiades cluster (M45) in the shoulder of
Taurus the Bull is seen easily with the naked eye because it is fairly close at
440 light years (mind you, a light year is 9.5 trillion kilometres). The
V-shaped Hyades in the face of Taurus is the closest at 150 light years,
although Aldebaran at one end of the V is actually a foreground star at a
distance of 65 light years. Many other clusters are greater than ten times
farther and require binoculars or a telescope to be seen at all, usually as a
hazy patch with some individual stars.
To the left of Taurus is a pentagram of stars marking the head, shoulders and
knees of the constellation Auriga the Charioteer. One of those stars - in
Auriga's right knee, with him facing us - is officially part of Taurus. Point
your binoculars halfway between this star and the one in Auriga’s right
shoulder. Open cluster M36 is just inside the line between the stars, and M37
is just outside. They look like fuzzy patches because, at distances of greater
than 4000 light years, a telescope is required to resolve individual stars.
Further inside is the diffuse open cluster M38, midway between the right
shoulder and left knee. All three clusters can be seen together in wide-field
binoculars
This Week in the Solar System
Saturday’s sunrise in Moncton is at 7:57 am and sunset will occur at 6:07 pm,
giving 10 hours, 10 minutes of daylight (8:00 am and 6:14 pm in Saint John).
Next Saturday the Sun will rise at 8:07 am and set at 5:57 pm, giving 9 hours,
50 minutes of daylight (8:10 am and 6:04 pm in Saint John).
The Moon is new on Thursday, providing darker skies for those who seek out
faint fuzzy objects with a telescope. Mercury is well placed for discovery this
week, sitting higher than usual and rising 85 minutes before sunrise. Venus
sets around 8:20 pm midweek, and Saturn will be setting before midnight.
Jupiter is at its best between 8 and 9 pm, and on Friday binocular and
telescope users can catch its moon Ganymede emerging from behind the planet at
8:12 and disappearing into the planet’s shadow at 9:58. Early risers on Friday
might catch a few shooting stars from the South Taurid meteor shower.
On Sunday evening at 8 pm, tune in to the Sunday Night Astronomy Show via the
Facebook page or YouTube channel of Astronomy by the Bay.
Nelson Poirier
Nature Moncton
