Nature Moncton Nature News: July 27 2024

NATURE MONCTON NATURE NEWS

July 27, 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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Please advise both the editor at nelsonpoirier435@gmail.com and the proofreader nicholsl@eastlink.ca if any errors are noted in wording or photo labelling.

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Proofreading courtesy of Louise Nichols at nicholsl@eastlink.ca

Heads-up on the Monarch blitz on today in the Moncton area.

Moncton and Dieppe: Monarchs & Cycles

Date: July 27th 2024 (Rain date: August 3rd)
Locations and times:
– 1 Foundry St. Milkweed Patch, Moncton (10:30)
– Place 1604, Dieppe (12:00)
– Surette St. Milkweed Patch, Dieppe (1:30)
(5 km one-way bicycle trip between stops)

Join us for a fun day of wildlife observation with other cyclers, as we celebrate Monarchs & Cycles during the International Monarch Monitoring Blitz! Nature NB, in collaboration with Mission Monarch, is excited to bring this event to you.

Cycling is optional as you can come to any event with a vehicle or by foot, but if you would like to experience all three stops, La Bikery has a number of rental bikes available at their Assomption St location.

Event Highlights:

1 – 10:30 – Moncton stop : Common Milkweed and Monarch Monitoring at the 1 Foundry St. patch: Help us count milkweed stems and monitor Monarch butterflies at all life stages.

2 – 12:00 – Picnic – Place 1604 stop, Dieppe (Bilingual) : Have a picnic with us, with the market nearby! With Petitcodiac Watershed Alliance and Nature NB, learn about native plant seeds and the ease of growing milkweed and other nectar plants in your garden. Discover the PWA’s rain garden projects.

3 – 1:30 – Final Stop (In French): Come check out with us the new garden near Surette Street installed by Les Ami(e)s de la Nature Sud-Est and monitor Monarch butterflies and milkweed.

We invite everyone to participate, whether you can attend all events or just one. Come be a part of this amazing initiative across our continent and help support Monarch conservation!

See you there!

**Aldo Dorio photographed what would appear to be part of a young-of-the-year family of Red Foxes at Hay Island on Friday.

**John Inman photographed one of his groundhogs looking for a drink but there was not much there as the Raccoons are in it all night. John finds a groundwater dish lets everyone get a drink when it is hot and dry.

John also photographed a different-looking fly standing upright approximating deerfly in size which turned out to be an interesting one. BugGuide has identified it as the Quadrate Snipe fly (Chrysopilus quadratus). It gets the snipe fly name due to its distinct mouth parts, which unfortunately do not show in the photo, that resemble the beak of the avian Snipe. The distinct shadow marks on the wing do show nicely. This fly feeds on plant juices and other small insects but not humans.

**On Friday Brian and Annette Stone visited Louise and Glen Nichols at their Aulac home.

While there, the excellent nature around their home tempted Brian to do a little photography and he shares photos he took of some of the collection of five plus Garter snakes that are renting their garden hoop house, a female Belted Kingfisher surveying the pond area from the roadside power lines, and one of the several Red Crossbills that are frequenting their yard picking grit from their driveway.

On their way to Aulac, Brian and Annette played tag with a huge storm cloud that hung over half the sky and soon after arriving, it dropped heavy rain for half an hour or so.

Earlier, on Brian's mailbox, a member of the Metallic Wood-boring Beetle family posed for a photo.

**It’s that time of year when we start to see seed clusters (samara) on ash and maple trees.

Nelson Poirier shares a photo of Red Ash samara recently noticed. There are several features that identify our three native ashes but a close look at the samara is one. With Red Ash, the wing of the samara goes halfway down the seed case, the wing encloses all the seed case with Black Ash, and the wing encloses only the tip of the seed case in White Ash.

As Red Ash and White Ash are dioecious, the pollen flowers and seed flowers appear on separate trees. Therefore, the seed clusters would appear only on female trees. Black ash will vary, being monoecious or dioecious.

Nelsonpoirier435@gmail.com

Nature Moncton