Nature Moncton Nature News: August 23 2024

NATURE MONCTON NATURE NEWS

August 23, 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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**Shannon Inman got a distant but documentary photo of three Great Egrets on the backside of Calhoun Marsh (near Riverside) on Thursday.

It’s not very often we would see a group of three egrets visiting an area in New Brunswick at the same time.

**Shannon Inman also captured a great photo with a Greater Yellow Legs and a Lesser Yellowlegs standing side by side to give a perfect comparison of features.

A Least Sandpiper was not far away to cooperate as well. These birds were all assembling below the Harvey Dam which is a great spot for the shorebirds to gather for the next few months.

**Norbert Dupuis experienced that special moment on Thursday when he saw that the Monarch Butterfly chrysalis he had found in a yard tree was laying on the ground empty with a beautiful fresh male Monarch Butterfly nearby appearing to have its winged veins just filling with fluid and preparing for inaugural flight. Let’s hope that mountain in Mexico will be the ultimate destination.

(Editor’s note: I suspect you are about five days ahead of me Norbert as I have a chrysalis waiting, protected in a netted cage, that is still green but I'm expecting in a few days it will start to turn dark and the ‘flag in a bag’ will appear.)

**On Thursday Brian Stone stopped in at the Sackville Waterfowl Park on his way to Fred Richard's place for an afternoon of chess and photographed some of the immature Pied-billed Grebes swimming and diving in the ponds.

At Fred Richard's place, after a satisfying series of games, Fred took Brian out into his yard and showed him a swarm of honeybees that had ‘occupied’ a bench and back wall of a backyard shed. He also showed him some of the honeycomb that he had removed from the swarm earlier. Brian made a short video of the swarm buzzing around and swarming on and under the bench and got photos of a separate batch of the swarm growing a new honeycomb at the top edge of the shed.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/e1jad9goddhnxqe05f6re/PXL_20240822_184244109.mp4?rlkey=k000hhi7k2776e8sxc0h2ydrf&st=cndnr1yg&dl=0

** It’s our day to review what next week’s night sky may have in store for us courtesy of sky guru Curt Nason. Take note of an event to take place at Fundy National Park next weekend.

This Week’s Sky at a Glance, 2024 August 24 – August 31
The Summer Triangle is at its highest in early evening. Vega pokes through the twilight overhead, followed by Altair to the south and Deneb to the east. All three are the brightest stars of their respective constellations of Lyra, Aquila and Cygnus. Although it is the dimmest of the trio, Deneb is actually much brighter but it is about 60 times more distant. If it were as close as the other two it would be more than ten times brighter than Venus.

The brighter stars appear near the end of civil twilight, when the Sun reaches six degrees below the horizon. Nautical twilight ends when it is 12 degrees below, at which time mariners have difficulty discerning the distant coastline from water. Readings for celestial navigation were taken during nautical twilight. When the Sun is 18 degrees below the horizon astronomical twilight ends, and in areas with no light pollution or moonlight the only light is from stars, planets, and airglow. Around the summer solstice northern New Brunswick gets only 80 minutes of dark sky between the end and start of astronomical twilight, while southern New Brunswick gets 3 hours and 10 minutes.

This Week in the Solar System
Saturday’s sunrise in Moncton is at 6:30 and sunset will occur at 8:11, giving 13 hours, 41 minutes of daylight (6:36 and 8:15 in Saint John). Next Saturday the Sun will rise at 6:39 and set at 7:58, giving 13 hours, 19 minutes of daylight (6:45 and 8:02 in Saint John).

The Moon rises with the Pleiades late Sunday evening, is at third quarter on Monday, and it visits with Jupiter and Mars early Tuesday and Wednesday. Saturn is rising in evening twilight, two weeks before reaching opposition, and its rings appear nearly edge-on in a telescope. Venus remains low in the west in evening twilight, setting before 9 pm. Mercury has moved into the morning sky, rising around 5:30 midweek.

The Fundy Star Party takes place next Friday and Saturday, August 30-31, in Fundy National Park.
See https://rascnb.ca/event/fundy-park-stargaze/ for details.

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