Nature Moncton Nature News: September 23 2024

NATURE MONCTON NATURE NEWS

Sept 23, 2024

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**The time of year has arrived when White-crowned sparrows will be moving through New Brunswick in migration south from their breeding grounds to the north of us.

John Inman had an adult White-crowned sparrow arrive to his Harvey yard on Sunday. The fluorescent head stripes and crown of breeding plumage were very much still intact. The young-of-the-year will be arriving as well; however, those fluorescent white stripes will appear as muted brown.

John’s duo of Sharp-shinned Hawks appeared to be equally pleased to see it arrive!

**Jane LeBlanc in St. Martins has noticed some of her Witch Hazel shrubs are flowering. The ones with more open sun flower before the ones in the shade, so the blooms are spread throughout the season.

(Editor’s note: the Witch Hazel is a very interesting shrub in that it flowers very late in the season often into November and December, seemingly unconcerned about frost.)

**On Saturday Brian Stone walked into the Mill Creek trail system in Riverview and walked a side trail in the back that led out of the park to find two large beaver ponds with extensive dam systems that he could not get enough photos of. He took camera photos and cell phone photos and tried the panorama option on the cell phone and also a camera panorama.

The only birds he saw were an American Goldfinch and an immature Hermit Thrush. A commonly seen Woolly Bear caterpillar idled past and an interestingly camouflaged moth landed on a branch nearby. Many dragonflies were present around the ponds but the only photo captured was of a mating pair of Autumn Meadowhawk dragonflies that were one of many similar pairs laying their eggs. Plenty of Green Frogs and Bullfrogs were enjoying the beaver ponds and some obligingly posed for the camera.