Nature Moncton Nature News: Jan 16 2022

NATURE MONCTON NATURE NEWS

Jan 16, 2022 (Sunday)

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Edited by: Nelson Poirier nelsonpoirier435@gmail.com

**Leigh Eaton suspects his feeder patrons, especially the Red-necked Pheasants, were quite aware of the coming storm as there appeared to be a foraging rush on Friday morning.

**Gordon Rattray has had interesting visitors to a peanut butter feeder he fashioned himself. I asked him for a copy which went into service at my own feeder yard on Saturday. The first customer was a Downy Woodpecker.

This feeder is approximately a foot square with ¼ inch hardware cloth sandwiched between approximately 3/8 inch wood picture frame style. Gordon uses a paint scraper to smear the mean peanut butter smooth with a wire. When used in cool weather, there is no danger of the peanut butter getting on the feathers of patrons.

The only real surprise on storm day was the number of American tree sparrows. I was normally getting 6 but on storm day, the feeders were covered with 25+. I don’t know where they all came from!

**There are 2 major presentations on for the coming week.

One on Owls in New Brunswick will take place on Wednesday night at 7 o’clock and anyone can register at the attached link by scrolling down to the Jan 19 event and registering:

https://www.naturetrust.nb.ca/en/passport-to-nature

As earlier mentioned, Nature Moncton Members Night will take place on Tuesday night, Jan 18 at 7 PM.

At the moment, two presentations are registered with probably more to come, Brian Stone will give a presentation of 15-20 of his best nature photos of 2021 and Nelson Poirier will give a presentation on the Peregrine Falcon nest on Assumption Place-then and now. The write up is attached below:

NATURE MONCTON JANUARY MEETING

JANUARY 18, 2022 AT 7:00 PM

VIRTUAL MEETING

MEMBERS’ NIGHT

LINK TO JOIN https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89311816328?pwd=YWFUUm9Ed1NKbGdCdmRxR1dINjE3Zz09

Once again, we have decided to hold our annual Members’ Night meeting virtually in order to keep everyone safe from Covid-19. Have you had an interesting encounter with nature in the past year? Have you taken some good photos of birds, insects, animals, or anything else in the various habitats of New Brunswick? The January Nature Moncton meeting belongs to members like you who would like to share their photos and stories of that world in short 15-minute presentations.

If you have something you’d like to share, contact Fred Richards at fredrichards@rogers.com and he will instruct you how to present on Zoom (very easy!) and do a short practice run with you if you’d like.

Let’s start 2022 off the right way – by sharing with one another our positive experiences of the natural world around us!

For those who want to attend the meeting, the link to join is below.

All are welcome, Nature Moncton member or not.

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89311816328?pwd=YWFUUm9Ed1NKbGdCdmRxR1dINjE3Zz09

**Christmas bird count coordinator Roger LeBlanc has the finalized report for the 2021 Moncton CBC circle with all field and feeder reports incorporated. It has already been posted to the Audubon site. Roger wants out to emphasize the importance of doing that final part in the event some people still see it as a nice activity but don’t realize that if you don’t get all of your info onto the Audubon site it’s not really worth anything more than a large winter bird watching outing. The totals in a one-page PDF format are attached below which will be on the Nature Moncton website as well. A few tidbits of summary are 54 species recorded for count day. We were just a bit over the average for the last 20 years which would be 51 and that a total of 16643 individuals was higher than any other years in the same period. A couple of other things to note would be that with 20 feeders reporting we were again at about average on that side and that even if less spectacular sometimes than field participations, it is an important part of the count and again (as is often the case) it helped us add additional species to the count day tally up. This year these were Northern Cardinal and Ruffed Grouse. On the participation side we had a good showing in the field in the context of the ongoing pandemic with 27 participants and again 20 feeder watchers reporting. Some species were at or near all time highs like Mallard Ducks, both species of nuthatches and Purple Finches while others were on the low side like Canada Jays, House Finches, and Pine Siskins. Then again in the “missing in action” section we have Bohemian Waxwings, Snow Bunting and redpolls. Also, one interesting thing to note is that we did have 3 reports of Cooper’s Hawk (the highest ever) but 0 reports of Sharp-shinned Hawks. One has to wonder what is up there. And finally with 4 species in the “unusual” section i.e. Wood duck, Great blue Heron, Snowy Owl and Western Tanager. We certainly did very good on that side. Roger would wager that with the tanager we are in a very exclusive club not only in Canada but the whole of North America to be able to get that species on a CBC.

Canada Goose 327- Red-breasted Nuthatch 212
American Black Duck 58 -White-breasted Nuthatch 17
Mallard 1796 -Brown Creeper 5
Common Eider 400- Golden-crown Kinglet 67
Hooded Merganser -1 American Robin 298
Red-necked Pheasant- 13 European Starling 2984
Ruffed Grouse 1- Cedar Waxwing 10
Bald Eagle 59- American Tree sparrow 31
Northern Harrier- 2 Song Sparrow 8
Cooper’s Hawk 3- Swamp sparrow 1
Red-tailed Hawk- 5 White-throated Sparrow 3
Merlin 1- Dark-eyed Junco 25
Peregrine Falcon 3- Northern Cardinal 1
Ring-billed Gull- 3 Purple Finch 163
Herring Gull 3302- House Finch 8
Iceland Gull 422- White-winged Crossbill 43
Lesser Black-backed Gull 4- Pine Siskin 3
Glaucous Gull 6- American Goldfinch 669
Great Black-back Gull 436- House Sparrow 28
Rock Pigeon 752
Mourning Dove 259-Short-eared Owl 4- Wood duck 2
Downy Woodpecker 44- Great blue Heron 1
Hairy Woodpecker 36- Western Tanager 1
Northern Flicker 2- Snowy Owl 1
Pileated Woodpecker 3-Canada Jay 1Blue Jay 95
American Crow 3087- Yellow-throated Warbler 1
Common Raven 78
Black-capped Chickadee 858