Nature Moncton Nature
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**Georges Brun sends the following comment: This
past week, the European starlings put on a show near the Dollarama Store on
East Main Street in Moncton. They were flying just like back in their
native land, Great Britain. It looked like a shorebird show at Johnson's
Mills!
**As so often happens, it
was another hawk day in John Inman’s yard, with three species arriving to check the
menu. A Cooper's hawk patrolled
from the shadows in the poplars, the resident red-tailed hawk came in
for its regular meat handout, and in the birch tree, two sharp-shinned hawks
were hunting blue jays; John comments, “It's not easy to entice other birds to
come and feed with that audience!”
Also, Stumpy the 3-legged raccoon is putting
on weight for the winter.
**A whole other world of
wildlife lives under the surface of our rivers and streams; we often never see it unless the creatures have a land phase in their life cycle.
Our damselflies and
dragonflies, as well as amphibians, are examples of wildlife that use our rivers and streams
as cradles for their young, then take to land for the reproductive mission.
We don’t get to meet many
of the fish species there unless we fish them commercially for food, go
angling, or do underwater diving.
Most fish tend to spawn in
the spring, while others spawn in the fall.
Nelson Poirier would like
to draw attention to one species, the Atlantic tomcod, which is on its
spawning run right now and will continue this run into December; it is also called the
frostfish because of its cold-weather mission.
I recall many years ago
being on a Christmas Bird Count in Grand Manan with Brian Dalzell, and surprising
numbers of tomcod were ascending a stream on a spawning mission with pieces of
ice in the stream.
Tomcod are small fish,
typically 6 to 12 inches -- 14 inches would be a whopper! They are often
fished through holes in the ice in the winter in some regions of Eastern Canada as they are very tasty and edible, very similar in flavour to their big
Atlantic cod relatives.
Edmund Redfield is
catching many tomcod at his traps in Salisbury, where he monitors the Petitcodiac
River fish community.
Maybe this is more than most
people really want to know about tomcod, but they are a significant part of our
wildlife community!
Nelson Poirier
Nature Moncton
