Nature Moncton Nature News: July 5 2024

NATURE MONCTON NATURE NEWS

July 5, 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

To respond by e-mail, please address your message to the information line editor, nelsonpoirier435@gmail.com .

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.

For more information on Nature Moncton, check the website at www.naturemoncton.com .

Proofreading courtesy of Louise Nichols at nicholsl@eastlink.ca

**Peter Gadd shares a photo taken at Miramichi Marsh on the morning of July 2^nd. The Eastern Kingbird nest is visible from the trail, northeast corner. It is far enough away from the trail that occupants are not disturbed by quiet walkers-by, yet close enough to be seen clearly. Both parents were in attendance.

**Verica LeBlanc got an excellent photo of a mating pair of Tawny-edged Skippers, a skipper we don’t often get photographs of.

The identity was confirmed by Tony Thomas, commenting the one at the left of the photo is the female.

**Gordon Rattray presents the last of his photos from the recent Botany Club of NB trip to Crock’s Point. Gordon says that this site had many interesting plants which included four plants of the S1 rating. File names ending with RG indicates that iNaturalist has rated the identification as Research Grade:

Roadside Agrimony - Agrimonia striata

Rough Fleabane - Erigeron strigosus

Shining Willow - Salix lucida bud, and one with leaves

Virgin's Bower - Clematis virginiana RG

Water Hemlock - Cicuta maculata RG leaf

Wild Chives - Allium schoenoprasum RG

Wood Nettle - Laportea canadensis RG

Wound Wort - Stachys palustris

**Fred Dube photographed the colourful beetle, the Mottled Tortoise Beetle (Deloyala guttata) recently. This flashy beetle can be found in fields, gardens, and lawns across eastern North America to the Rocky Mountains.

**Aldo Dorio photographed a family of American Wigeon at Wishart Point on Thursday.

**On Thursday Brian Stone finally got a chance to go see the rare Purple Gallinule that is presently making the Sackville Waterfowl Park its home. Many bird and nature lovers were at the park vainly trying to get a decent glimpse of the colourful bird that was resting in the reeds, well hidden. After a time, the gallinule began to move and resumed feeding along the edge of the reeds, occasionally moving into open areas to allow anxious photographers a chance for an unobstructed photo.

Brian also returned to the backyard of Barbara Smith hosting a Red-eyed Vireo nest and took some photos of the healthy, well-developing chicks from the safe distance of a tall back deck.

**It’s Friday and time for our weekly preview of next week’s night sky courtesy of sky guru Curt Nason.

This Week’s Sky at a Glance, 2024 July 6 – July 13
Galaxies are favourite targets for amateur astronomers and many are visible with just binoculars. Two are seen easily with the naked eye in the southern hemisphere: the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. The Andromeda Galaxy is a naked-eye blur for rural New Brunswickers and it looks majestic in binoculars, but there is one galaxy that is spectacular regardless of your location or observing equipment and that is our home galaxy.

The Milky Way is at least 110,000 light years across, and although it is composed of perhaps 400 billion stars we can distinguish only about 4000 unaided as individual stars from a rural area. The Sun is 27,000 light years from the galactic core, within a spur between the inner Sagittarius and outer Perseus spiral arms. When we look above the spout of the Sagittarius Teapot asterism we are looking toward the galactic core, but vast clouds of dust hide the stars between the spiral arm and the core. South of the head of Cygnus the Swan we see the Milky Way split in two by the Great Rift, one of those dust clouds.

Star formation occurs in clouds of gas and dust within the spiral arms and some can be seen as bright patches with binoculars. Just above the spout of the Teapot is M8, the Lagoon Nebula; and a hint of M20, the Trifid Nebula, can be seen in the same field of view above. Scanning to the left up the Milky Way you encounter M17, the Swan (or Omega) Nebula; and star clusters M16 in the Eagle Nebula and M11, the Wild Duck Cluster. A tour of the Milky Way under a dark sky can keep a binocular stargazer engaged for an evening.

This Week in the Solar System
Saturday’s sunrise in Moncton is at 5:35 and sunset will occur at 9:12, giving 15 hours, 37 minutes of daylight (5:43 and 9:13 in Saint John). Next Saturday the Sun will rise at 5:41 and set at 9:08, giving 15 hours, 27 minutes of daylight (5:49 and 9:10 in Saint John).

The day-old crescent Moon is above Venus this Saturday after sunset and above Mercury on Sunday. Saturn rises around midnight this week and it is seen best in early morning twilight high in the southern sky. Mars is about ten degrees lower in the east and to the right of the Pleiades star cluster, while Jupiter and Aldebaran are below the Pleiades. This scene only gets better over the month. Binocular users might be able to see Uranus less than a degree above Mars before 5 am on Wednesday.

The Saint John Astronomy Club meets in the Rockwood Park Interpretation Centre this Saturday at 7 pm. On Sunday evening at 8 pm tune in to the Sunday Night Astronomy Show via the Facebook page or YouTube channel of Astronomy by the Bay.

Questions? Contact Curt Nason at nasonc@nbnet.nb.ca.