Nature Moncton Nature News: January 22 2024

NATURE MONCTON NATURE NEWS

January 22, 2024

Nature Moncton members as well as any naturalist in New Brunswick or beyond are invited to share their photos and descriptions of recent nature sightings to build a fresh (almost) daily edition of Nature News

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Proofreading courtesy of Louise Nichols at nicholsl@eastlink.ca

**We have not had a significant number of Pine Grosbeaks visiting New Brunswick so far this season.

Larry Sherrard came across a flock on a back road near Miramichi on Saturday. They were intent on roadside picking at gravel or possibly road salt. Larry comments a significant number in the group were adult males and was able to capture a distant photo of a male.

** With the decreasing temperatures, the small areas of open water around bridges are starting to form and become an excellent area to observe our winter waterfowl.

Magda Kuhn and Grant Ramsey saw two pairs of Red-breasted Mergansers from the Rexton bridge crossing the Richibucto River on Sunday.

**The male Ring-necked Pheasant is indeed a very showy dude but Norbert Dupuis’s photo of two female Ring-necked Pheasants strolling across his Memramcook East yard shows just how beautiful the female can be against a snow-white background.

Norbert also photographed a female Dark-eyed Junco showing the conservative brown tones in its plumage. Most female Dark-eyed Juncos migrate and we are more used to seeing the slate-coloured males, some of which stay with us for the winter.

** Shannon Inman came across a type of toothy mushroom on a deadfall recently. Freezing has no doubt created some alterations but the large teeth do suggest this to be a Bear’s Head Tooth Mushroom as a first guess or perhaps a Comb Tooth mushroom as a second guess. Both mushrooms are in the Hericium genus.

**On Sunday morning Brian Stone walked the trails around the Sackville water retention ponds searching for the reported juvenile, Black-crowned Night Heron but had no luck locating that bird. While he was looking around the small areas of open water, he noticed that one of the female Mallard Ducks in a small group of mixed male and female ducks seemed to be struggling with some food item that it had dredged up from the bottom of the ditch it was foraging in. On closer inspection, Brian was surprised to see that the food item giving the duck a bit of a problem was a fairly large Leopard Frog! Brian remembers seeing mallards eating insects at times in the summer months but did not realize that they could go full-on carnivore and gulp down large amphibians like this. A little research showed that mallards do eat a variety of critters that are not commonly thought of as duck food. After a long and vigorous struggle, the mallard managed to slide the frog down for a hefty meal that should satisfy it for a while.

(Editor’s note: I suspect very few of us have ever witnessed a Mallard Duck making lunch of a sizable frog. Their bill is simply not designed to hold on to fish/amphibian prey like that of the heavily serrated bill of a merganser. Brian copied some comments from the Audubon guide on this scenario which are quoted below.)

Mallard Duck diet “Omnivorous. The majority of their diet is plant material, including seeds, stems, and roots of a vast variety of different plants, especially sedges, grasses, pondweeds, smartweeds, and many others; also acorns and other tree seeds, various kinds of waste grain. Also eat insects, crustaceans, mollusks, tadpoles, frogs, earthworms, and small fish. Young ducklings may eat mostly aquatic insects."

Also, along that same trail, Brian photographed a large Cecropia Moth Larval Cocoon attached to a small twig close to the ground.

(Editor’s note: a portion of these larval cocoons get parasitized and fail to complete their mission. Hopefully, this one has not as it is now in an aquarium in a cold garage in hopes the beautiful adult moth will emerge in June to be released.)

Leaving the town of Sackville Brian drove through the High Marsh Rd. on the Tantramar Marsh for about an hour and spent a large part of that time parked and photographing members of a large flock of several hundred Snow Buntings that were foraging in a plowed field just past the covered bridge. They flew and landed in waves going past his car and Brian shot photos of them for almost 20 minutes before realizing he had better stop if he ever wanted to be able to look through all those pictures.

After the Snow Bunting parade, Brian did his best to get images of a distant Rough-legged Hawk flying past which turned out to be the only bird seen other than the buntings. As Brian was leaving, he noticed a small bundle of brown fur trundling along the side of the road and he stopped to get some rear-end photos of a Muskrat as it tried to escape the camera by running through a field.

(Editor’s note: a muskrat out in an open field, not near water to escape to, is risking its well-being with predators like eagles on the watch.)

**Nelson Poirier has been using cankered Beech sticks with holes drilled in them, filling the holes with suet blend. It has been popular with suet connoisseurs as the gnarled surface of the sticks makes easy perching areas for these birds. A photo of a male Hairy Woodpecker enjoying the menu is attached.

Nelsonpoirier435@gmail.com

Nelson Poirier

Nature Moncton