Nature Moncton Nature
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The camera on the peregrine
falcon nest box on the summit of Assumption Place is now live. When
checking the link to watch the activity, scroll down to the first large image,
which shows what is happening in real time.
There is definitely action
on the nest on Saturday morning!
Photos show that an egg
has been opened, with evidence of a hatchling, but the mother falcon is very
coy, mantling the cargo beneath her. We should see a lot more of what is
happening over the next few days.
Anita Cannon, Georges Brun,
and Nelson Poirier noted new activity in the 7:30 AM area.
https://www.zoodemagnetichillzoo.ca/nest-cam
**Yvette Richard made the
pilgrimage to St. Martins on Thursday and was very pleased to be able to spend
time observing the male summer tanager, which appears to be in no rush
to be going anywhere.
Yvette saw a female
Baltimore oriole in Salisbury at Highland Park on the way back home.
There were a pair of pied-billed
grebes in a pond, but no other water birds were seen.
Yvette did not have to go
far from her Cocagne home to photograph the 2 snowy owls that have
been surprisingly staying in an area for the past few days.
Yvette saw one on Friday in
the Cormierville Marsh and one on a bird house on the road to the wharf.
It seemed like the one on
the marsh was favouring the right wing, folding it in and out.
Yvette also observed a
pair of mating willets in the marsh just past the Cocagne Irving before
the bridge. Willets were seen there for a few days now.
**The summer tanager was still
in St. Martins on Friday, but just as Jane LeBlanc was about to photograph it,
all the birds flew....the local merlin did a fly by.
Later, at the harbour, she
saw her first greater yellowlegs of the season.
**We are not finished with St.
Martins yet!
Ted Sears photographed a
pleasant photo of a male bobolink that also could not resist the buffet
extraordinaire at the feeder yard of Derek Sleep, who has hosted all the other
special patrons this week.
**Brian and Annette Stone
were walking in Mapleton Park on Friday when a hawk flew out of the woods and
zipped past them to land in a tree in a nearby yard. Brian crept up close
enough for a telephoto picture or two and suspects it might have been a juvenile
Cooper's hawk.
After walking around to
the other side of the park, they took a break and sat down on a
picnic table beside a small stream, and soon they noticed a family of 13 mallard
ducklings foraging their way up the stream and paddling past them
fearlessly. Momma duck was not far behind them, and when she noticed the
observers, she hustled the little ones back down the stream to a safer spot.
**Nelson Poirier and Larry
Sherrard recently spotted some heads poking out of the grass on a side road to
call for an investigative check out. It turned out to be a pair of domestic guinea
hens checking out the roadside gravel.
Nelson Poirier
Nature Moncton
