NATURE MONCTON NATURE NEWS
December 2,
2023
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Edited by
Nelson Poirier nelsonpoirier435@gmail.com
Proofreading
courtesy of Louise Nichols at nicholsl@eastlink.ca
**On Friday, December 1st, Brian Coyle was out to check some of
his trail cameras near a Beaver Pond. Conditions on the thin ice of the pond
were perfect, with a half inch of snow and a shaded area to hold any tracks.
Brian was pleasantly surprised to see all kinds of tracks and slides of at
least two individual River Otters. With the milder temperatures, the
tracks were beginning to degrade. The average length of the tracks was 3"
and 2" in width with 5 toes showing, along with the otter signature slide
marks, clearly identifying these tracks as River Otter.
Brian Coyle also captured an excellent trail camera video of a rarely-seen
blonde Coyote. View this striking animal at the link below:
**Louise Nichols is trying to do regular weekly surveys on High Marsh Rd. on Tantramar Marsh, scanning with a scope along the road to search for raptors and other species. She has done 4 surveys so far and has found a regular presence of Rough-legged Hawks (about 4 or 5 each time) along with Northern Harriers (3 or 4) and Bald Eagles. Normally, Louise sees 3 to 5 Bald Eagles, but on last week's survey, she got a much larger count of 14. She has also frequently observed flocks of Snow Buntings. She was out on High Marsh Friday morning for the first day of the winter bird count. She found 5 Rough-legged Hawks, including one dark morph; 2 Northern Harriers, and just 2 Bald Eagles. Some of the birds were close enough for at least distant photos, so Louise attaches some photos to compare the lighter version of a Rough-legged Hawk with the dark morph bird. Note the 'hockey puck' markings on the underside of the wings in the light morph bird -- and the darker body and head, and darker underside of the wings on the dark morph. She also includes a photo of a female Northern Harrier and one of a Bald Eagle approaching a pylon with prey in its talons.
**On Friday
night at 9:30 pm, Brian Stone noticed that the Aurora notification site
showed a strong possibility of visible aurora and he went outside to check but
found cloudy conditions were prevalent. He checked a few times over the next
half hour and caught a break in the clouds to allow him to try a few long exposure
photos. With the bright city lights and 79% full-waning Moon in the sky, Brian could
not see anything visually, but the camera managed to pick up some of the aurora
colours with a 10-second exposure at ISO 400 while on a tripod.
**Leon
Gagnon who spends the summer at Wilson Point, Miscou Island, is always a
valuable source of information on events happening on the island in the
summer. We were unable to open Leon’s messages this past summer due to
technical challenges which have been overcome. The information is a bit
outdated but still provides a chance to review some of the events that happened in this special
part of New Brunswick. Some of Leon’s reports follow with some photographs.
A storm last winter broke and uprooted several trees in Leon’s
woods, especially Black Spruce. The sandy soil is shallow; however, these trees
had still survived for around 50 years. In addition to the winter storm, this
summer a corridor of high winds crossed the woods and crushed the trees that
had been uprooted.
La Malbaie
lagoon south. The lagoon exists because a bottleneck receives
and then evacuates water from the Gulf of St. Lawrence twice a day, depending
on the tides. From one year to the next the bottleneck changes location; this
year it moved north. Also, following the storms of recent years, erosion has
seriously damaged the cliff located to the east of the body of water, on the
edge of the gulf. At low tide, large flat areas of sand now occupy the space
between the water table and the gulf.
Ecological
sports. In recent years, several sportsmen have come to enjoy the environment
of Miscou Island on the coast of the Gulf of St. Lawrence or in the bay west
of Wilson Point. Kite surfing, canoeing, and kayaking are popular in
July and August. Also, sport fishing for Striped Bass is permitted for several
weeks. These sporting activities are gradually replacing duck hunting, which is
practiced less and less.
Some of Leon’s
interesting observations from this year:
Three Hudsonian
Godwits were observed at a great distance in La Malbaie lagoon on
July 28.
Canada Geese are seen
regularly during the summer, particularly in the Muddy Brook valley, an area
located west of Wilson Point. When the hunt began, most of the geese took
refuge in La Malbaie lagoon, where they are more difficult to reach.
Bob compares these stats for November 2022 with November 2023. The table on these stats as Bob sent them is below.
(Editor’s note: it is interesting to note from Bob's statistics that November of 2022 was overall warmer than November 2023. There was also significantly more precipitation in November 2022 than in November 2023.
|
2022 |
2023 |
||
|
morning
temperatures |
daily highs and
rainfall |
morning
temperatures |
daily highs and
rainfall |
|
+19-1 day +16-1 +11-1 +10-1 +9-2 +8-1 +7-1 +3-1 +4-3 +2-2 +1-2 0-1 -2-3 -3-2 -5-1 -7-2 -8-2 -10-1 |
+21-1 +20-2 +18-2 +17-1 +15-1 +12-1 +11-1 +10-1 +8-3 +6-3 +5-3 123 mms. rain 4 cms. snow |
+15-1 +9-1 +7-1 +5-2 +4-2 +3-3 +2-6 +1-3 0-2 -1-4 -2-2 -5-1 -6-1 -8-1 |
+15-1 +14-1 +13-2 +10-2 +8-2 +7-1 +5-9 50 mms.rain 2.5 cms.snow |
**As
mentioned in yesterday’s edition, the days ahead will be great for detecting
animal tracks and scat and good photographs could be possible. It is very
helpful to know the length and width measurement of the track and the distance
between paw imprints measuring front tip of track to front tip of the next
track in centimetres. I am attaching a photo of a flexible fabric tape
measure that is very compact and easy to carry. They are probably available in other places, but I got mine at Fabricville.
With
scat, it is very helpful to know the diameter and the length of the scat to get
closer to confirming whodunit.
Nelson Poirier
Nature Moncton
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