Hi all,
Have a new video of Canada jays and Blue Jays.
Have never seen the two species together!
Their habitat usually prevents them from getting together.
Video quality - unfortunately is very poor.
Have any of you seen the two species at the same time and habitat?
Paul.
Posting for Dominic Cormier:
Hi Winter Bird Listers,
I will be managing the winter bird list this year. The reporting period runs from 1 Dec to 28 Feb. As in previous years, we will be keeping a collective total for the whole province. New this year, we will also be keeping a collective total for each county. Use the link below to access the sheet. There are two tabs. All reports to eBird will be monitored, and I will check naturens and NS-RBA. I check the NSBS facebook page and other bird related ones rarely, so some county birds may slip past me. If you see any reports on facebook, or hear first-hand reports from local birders and other sources, feel free to post here or direct message me through any channels (discord, email, facebook).
I hope we can get a friendly county competition going, and perhaps not let Halifax, Kings, Shelburne, and Yarmouth have all the glory.
https://tinyurl.com/yxuhgt4o
Happy birding,
Dominic Cormier
There was stil a great blue heron at the Salt Marsh trail (3rd pond on right coming from Bissett rd).
Probably not all that late in the season but I had not seen any anywhere for about 2 weeks.
Henk Kwindt, Cow Bay NS.
Yesterday around 22:50, there was a very vocal long-eared owl behind the house where the road to Heckman's Island turns down at the border between Garden Lots and Blue Rocks.
James R. Hirtle
LaHave
folks, the eBird database will be down for the next couple of days (see
note below).
James
****
As you are likely aware, eBird's long-term database migration from Oracle
to Postgres will be coming to an end on November 17-19. This means that all
of eBird will be down on those days - including the review tools, as well
as the Macaulay Library, Birds of the World - everything. More information
is here: https://ebird.org/news/database-update-november-17-19-maintenance
While we will have a notification system in eBird Mobile to warn users
about this, we can't reach everyone. Please feel free to distribute this
information to your local birding listservs, Whatsapp groups, or other
channels, including the link to the homepage article above.
Thanks for your help, and I sincerely hope everyone will be able to enjoy
birding in an eBirdless world for a few days!
Best,
John Garrett
eBird Project Assistant
With a variety of birds most days it is interesting to see the pecking order at the suet feeder. I would have guessed the jays and the woodpeckers would top the list and they certainly take precedence over the chickadees and nuthatches but rather surprisingly it is the Starlings that rule the roost. We have 2 that show up regularly and when they arrive the others make no attempt to share and wait until they leave.
Peter StowHubbards
Hi All,
I cleaned out my Tree Swallow nest boxes last week and 2020 was a pretty good year for active nests. I monitored 28 boxes this year and 17 had successful nests. There were 10 squirrel roosts - 7 Red & 3 Flying. One Red Squirrel roost was on top of a Tree Swallow nest. Two boxes were empty.
There are three related side notes of interest to this year's count.
The plexiglass predator guards added last year weren't successful in keeping out squirrels. The plexiglass stopped squirrels from enlarging the entrance hole and the 11/2" hole is too small to allow pregnant squirrels to enter/leave the box. Squirrels were able to enter the box for other purposes like winter roosts.
This season, for the first time, I observed a Red Squirrel predation of a Tree Swallow nest. I happened to spot a young squirrel poke it's head out of a box I knew had an active nest. I was able to quickly remove the squirrel, but two chicks were already dead. I removed dead chicks and quickly examined remaining two chicks and found them in good condition. I straighten up the nest, closed the box and left. Within a short time, the parents came back, and breeding soon returned to normal. When cleaned out this fall the nest had no evidence of predation, so I presume the squirrel never returned and the two remaining chicks were reared successfully .
In 2019 I collected and saved the Tree Swallow nests when I cleaned out the boxes in the fall. In May/June of 2020 I was able to collect dozens of moth specimens from a few of these nests. One of the species collected - Niditinea sabroskyi - turned out to be a new species for Canada. A short note on the range expansion has recently been published in the Proceedings of the Entomological Society of Washington, 122(4) : 1019-1021.
All the best.
Fritz McEvoy
Sunrise Valley CB
