Congrats on that significant moth record, Fritz! I know you've discovered
several dozen species of moth new to our province, but is this your first
Canadian record? Also, I found your paper online (
https://bioone.org/journals/proceedings-of-the-entomological-society-of-was…),
but don't have access to it. Can you send me a copy of the PDF?
Thanks,
Randy
_________________________________
RF Lauff
Way in the boonies of
Antigonish County, NS.
On Fri, 13 Nov 2020 at 12:34, John and Nhung <nhungjohn(a)eastlink.ca> wrote:
I’ve probably noted this before, but back in the
‘60’s, we returned home
to the house on Wyman Road, south of Yarmouth, to find a red squirrel on
top of the tree swallow house. My father put up a ladder and found that
the squirrel had killed all of the chicks. He put a property-wide bounty
on red squirrels after that.
The bird house has gone and a more recent attempt didn’t attract any
swallows. Still, the local tree swallow population seems relatively
healthy, and the last couple of years I have seen more barn swallows than
before, particularly over the hill in Chebogue.
We still have red squirrels, as well. Not as many as when I was a kid,
but still some.
The feral cat population, on the other hand, is by no means threatened.
*From:* Fritz McEvoy [mailto:fritzmcevoy@hotmail.com]
*Sent:* November 13, 2020 12:21 PM
*To:* naturens
*Subject:* [Naturens] Tree Swallow nests 2020
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
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