Nature Moncton Nature News: Feb 15 2023

NATURE MONCTON NATURE NEWS

Feb 15, 2023

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Edited by Nelson Poirier nelsonpoirier435@gmail.com

Proofreading courtesy of Louise Nichols at nicholsl@eastlink.ca

**On Sunday, Brian Coyle was able to install the two Barred Owl nesting boxes given to Nature Moncton by Scott Makepeace, providing some nice photographs of the potential new digs.
Brian will monitor the 2 boxes weekly to see if one of them ends up with a Barred Owl pair nesting and if so a trail camera will get some undisturbed action.

**On Tuesday afternoon Feb. 14, Suzanne Tarte Poussart spotted a Cooper's Hawk (suspected) in the garden which had just caught a European Starling. Yves had just enough time to grab his camera and was able to take 2 photos before the hawk flew away with its prey. Everything happened very quickly, but the end result is quite exciting. Last Saturday, while the group was at their home as part of the Nature Moncton Birdfeeder Tour, Gordon Rattray was pretty sure that he had seen such a hawk fly away from the linden tree. This event indicates that he probably was right. Yves will keep his eyes open to check if the hawk will come back to get another lunch.

**Brian Stone sends a distant photo of a group of Barrow's Goldeneye Ducks taken on Tuesday at the only open water he found at Cocagne. All other areas he visited were well iced over.

At home later on Tuesday, Brian decided to try for another astronomical photo as the planet Neptune was going to be close enough to the bright planet Venus at sunset to make it easy to pick it out among the surrounding stars. Neptune is the dimmest of the "visible" planets, the planets visible to the eye or with binocular aid. Even in good binoculars, it can be difficult to pick out as it is just below naked eye visibility and blends in with the dim stars around it. When Neptune gets close to a brighter, more easily spotted astronomical object such as Venus it then makes it much easier to find without studying star charts and comparing long minutes of viewing to those charts.

Nelsonpoirier435@gmail.com

Nelson Poirier

Nature Moncton