Nature Moncton Nature
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** A heads up on the Nature Moncton Wednesday walk this week: the guide will be Marbeth
Wilson with Pointe-du-Chene as the destination, where she expects the terns to be
active and lots more to sleuth in that rich area.
**Ted Sears in St. Martins
has already been successful in collecting monarch butterfly caterpillars and
letting them develop to the chrysalis stage. Some have already
emerged as adult butterflies, as shown in the photograph Ted submits.
Jim Wilson was consulted, and he feels there will be time for another generation from adults emerging from
chrysalides at this time, which means it will be their progeny that will be heading
to overwinter in Mexico. Jim suggests mid-August is approximately when monarch butterflies
stop copulating at our latitude.
She also confirms she has two female monarch butterflies laying eggs on her milkweed patch.
**More on milkweed! Nelson
Poirier keeps a close eye on his milkweed patch for beetles that could
potentially skeletonize the patch. So far, he has noted only very small skullcap
leaf beetles and stink bugs. Stink bugs have a very distinctive
silhouette helpful to identify them. Neither of these is a threat to milkweed.
No confirmed sightings of
adult monarch butterflies for Nelson (as yet!)
**Pat Gibbs is happy to
report that the northern cardinals that she saw earlier this year around
her Moncton home seem to be sticking around. Pat thinks they may have a nest in
the trees on the traffic island in front of her home and seem to be going back and forth from there
quite a bit. She was able to nab a photo when a male visited her ground
feeder.
(Editor’s note: as we get
more used to northern cardinals in New
Brunswick -- outside of the Quispamsis and Sussex area -- we know the significance
of watching for the dark bill of fledglings, which will remain dark until
fall.)
Nelson Poirier
Nature Moncton
