ISLAND NATURALIST NATURE PEI IS CELEBRATED ITS 50Th ANNIVERSARY in 2019
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ISLAND NATURALIST NATURE PEI IS CELEBRATED ITS 50th ANNIVERSARY IN 2019 ISSUE # 233 JAN - MAR, 2020 SOME HIGHLIGHTS • President’s Report; • Nature PEI News; • Online Flora of PEI; • First Record of Toad Rush; • Crown Point Natural Area Secured; • Voting Underway for Lichen Emblem for PEI; • PEIMHF & Summerside Natural History Awards; • First PEI Records for Roesel’s Bush-Cricket; • Strong Supporters of Nature - Now Gone; • News from About; • Plant Phenology Monitoring on PEI; • Christmas Bird Counts; • COVID-19; • Weather Events; • Great sightings: Brant, Eurasian Wigeon; Tufted Duck; Lesser Scaup, Glaucous Gull, Cooper’s Hawk, Canada Jay, Carolina Wren, Northern Mockingbird, & Northern Cardinal; • Environmental Calendar; NATURE PEI - NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND P.O. BOX 2346, CHARLOTTETOWN, PEI C1A 8C1 Meetings are held of the first Tuesday of the month from October to June at 7:30 p.m. at Beaconsfield’s Carriage House, corner of West and Kent Street in Charlottetown. Each meeting commences with a brief business meeting followed by a nutrition break and our guest speaker. Members and non-members are welcome. Membership is open to anyone interested in the natural history of Prince Edward Island. Membership is available at any meeting or by contacting the Treasurer at P.O. Box 2346, Charlottetown PE C1A 8C1. Annual membership is $20 and renewals are due in January. Multi-year renewals are $20 per year for which you wish to renew. Membership expiry dates are shown in the top right hand corner of the mailing label or by a notice provided to those receiving electronic newsletters. The Society is directed by a volunteer Executive elected from its members. 2020 Executive: President ....................................................Rosemary Curley, Stratford 902-569-1209 [email protected] Vice-President ..........................................David Morrow, Charlottetown 902-569-4131 [email protected] Past President ............................... ...............Ian Scott, Charlottetown 902-892-5796 [email protected] Secretary ..........................................Robert Harding, Summerville 902-838-2699 [email protected] Treasurer ...........................................Francine Desmeules, Charlottetown 902-626-3304 [email protected] Director- Program & Publicity .............Connie Gaudet, Stratford 902-367-5774 [email protected] Director - Field Trips ..................................Barbara Dylla, Charlottetown, 902-367-2428 [email protected] Newsletter Editor....................................Dan McAskill, Donagh 902-569-4351 [email protected] NEWSLETTERS are normally published quarterly and are available in Acrobat Reader colour format via E-mail or in black & white hard copy delivered by mail. Hard copies are printed on recycled paper. Articles, notes, reports, drawings, bird sightings, plant records, pictures, etc. are welcomed from members and non-members. If you have seen anything unusual, please share it with us. It is important to have your nature observations recorded so that others may learn from them. All contributions should be sent by mail to Dan McAskill, Newsletter Editor, Nature PEI (NHSPEI), 368 Brazel Road, Donagh, PEI C1B 0T9 or via E-mail to [email protected] The next deadline for articles, sightings, or other newsletter information is September 10, 2020. Illustrations/Pictures: Our thanks to ACCDC, Vanessa Bonnyman, Paul-Michael Brunelle, Colin Chipman, Victoria Doan, Gov PEI, Finton MacKinnon, Diane Griffin, Bob Harding, Island Nature Trust, Donna Martin, Dan McAskill, Dale Murchison, Dwaine Oakley, Roberta Palmer, and David Wake for using their photos/illustrations. Reprinting: Editors of other newsletters and teachers wishing to copy classroom materials are welcome to reprint articles from the Island Naturalist (except when copyrighted). Due acknowledgment must be provided to the Island Naturalist, the author and illustrator. Web page: www.NaturePEI.ca Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NaturePEI Nature PEI gratefully acknowledges support from the Department of Education and Life Long Learning which enables distribution of newsletters to schools and libraries desiring it. The Society has representation on the board of the Island Nature Trust. The Society is a registered charity and a non-profit organization (Part 2, PEI Companies Act). Tax receipts are issued for donations to the Society and these funds are used to further the work of the Society. Cover Illustration: The wren that is normally seen on PEI is the Winter Wren. The four other wren species recorded on PEI are rated as accidental in PEI. This past winter, Dale Murchison was lucky enough to see and capture pictures of one of these, a Carolina Wren, in his yard in Montague. This is the second year that he seen one on his property. This small chunky wren with a long tail often pops its tail upright. 2 NATURE PEI PRESIDENT’S REPORT FOR 2019: By Rosemary Curley 2019 was a banner year for Nature PEI as we celebrated the 50th anniversary of our beginning in 1969 as the Natural History Society of Prince Edward Island. Among our pursuits was the assembly of an historic minute book; even with gaps, it is an enduring record of our society’s work. More exciting was an introductory birding course with four evening sessions and a field trip. Many of the “students” joined Nature PEI, and membership now stands at 163, up from 110 a year ago. In August (23-25th) we put on a “picnic weekend”. We invited all previous executive members and you to a reception on Friday at Ravenwood, followed by a nature walk. On Saturday we laid on a dragonfly talk and dragonfly hunting expedition, Participants in Society’s 50th Anniversary Greenwich Walk plus mackerel fishing. Then, on Sunday it was birding to David Wake collection East Point, and two nature walks and a barbecue at Greenwich with the cooperation and support of PEI National Park. These events were generally well attended. In July we combined efforts with the Nature Conservancy of Canada to conduct a Bioblitz at Kingsboro Nature Reserve, and in September with Island Nature Trust to celebrate Deroche Pond, the location of the first ever properties secured by Island Nature Trust. We also conducted trail walks at Winter River and Bonshaw and a birding trip from Charlottetown to Borden. Thanks to all bird course and trip leaders, Dan McAskill, Dwaine Oakley, Ray Cooke, Brendan Kelly, Bob Harding, Diane Griffin, Gerald MacDougall, Luke Peters, and Barbara Dylla with Marion Copleston and Tony Reddin. Nature PEI held 9 monthly meetings, each with a speaker and an important topic. It started in January with a citizen science adventure “A Midsummer Night’s Screen: Moths at the Back Door” by Bob Harding. Our member’s night in February featured your input in pictures and artefacts with storylines woven together by Gerald MacDougall. This was followed by Donna Martin on red foxes, Denise Motard on birds of Hawaii, and Norman Dewar’s expose of garbage in Charlottetown streams and wetlands. In June, visiting author Ariel Gordon introduced us to the urban forests of Canada. In October, Dr. Dave McRuer enlightened us on “The Impact of Free-roaming Cats on Wildlife, Environment, and Human Health” and generously supplied a copy for our website (www.naturepei.ca). Megan Harris reviewed 40 years of work by the Island Nature Trust and in December we held out first official book launch with “Mammals of Prince Edward Island and Adjacent Marine Waters”, complete with the five authors signing books and a presentation on the mammals. Again this year, we note our donations to Island Nature Trust and the donation of prize money for the provincial Science Fair, with judging of the natural history entries by Gerald MacDougall and Connie Gaudet. We had both provincial and federal elections in 2019; during the campaigns we joined with over 20 other environmental groups to provide fora in which the candidates were quizzed on their stance on various environmental issues. We contributed questions and money to these events. Citizen Science continues to be a “raison d’etre” for Nature PEI and as usual, we carried out Christmas, Bain and Bennett Bird Counts. In 2018, Bob Harding, Elwood Coakes and Donna Martin submitted specimens of pollinators known as flower flies (Syrphidae) to John Klymko of the Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Center, and in 2019 John reported to us that 9 species new to PEI were collected. All our flower flies have been deposited in the New Brunswick Museum. Meanwhile, a project begun in 2015 concluded in 2019 with the publication in the Canadian Field-Naturalist (dated 2018) volume 132(4): 330–34 of “The spiders of Prince Edward Island: experts and citizen scientists collaborate for faunistics.” The eight authors, including five local naturalists, were credited with the James Fletcher Award for best paper for that volume by the Canadian Field-Naturalist. Naturalists always want to find out more and what better way to support local naturalists and scientists than to provide an online Flora of Prince Edward Island? This project is marching toward completion in cooperation with the Atlantic Canada Conservation Data Center, PEI Wildlife Conservation Fund and the PEI Museum and Heritage Foundation. And with donations from members and the public. 3 Your sightings and stories were faithfully recorded in four issues of the Island Naturalist. Thanks to all the members who contributed to the newsletter and to our editor Dan McAskill who glued it together. Again, we salute the Birding on PEI Facebook and Nature PEI webpage managers, Sharon Clark, Ron Arvidson and Ian Scott. Nature PEI is continually advocating for conservation. Our executive meets each month and deals with ongoing and new issues. On November 21, we met with Premier Dennis King and Minister Matthew MacKay to plead for a new museum with a natural history curator and space for specimen storage – this will negate the necessity of sending our science specimens to New Brunswick. Premier King recalled that we asked for a curator of natural history at the environmental forum during the election campaign and that he supported that.