ABOUT US

Membership Costs are $25 per person or $35 per couple/family per year Students $10.
Anyone interested in Nature may join the club.  You don't have to be an expert! 
We spend considerable time on all facets of Nature including Birds, Butterflies, Dragonflies, Moths, Mammals, Wild Flowers, Mushrooms, Fish, Amphibians, Astronomy, etc. Topics cover all aspects of Nature.

Field trips are held regularly.  All can attend field trips

Nature Moncton Meeting Site.
From intercity, proceed North on Mapleton Rd. (off Mountain Rd.) 2.4 km to the third set of lights beyond the intersection of Mapleton Rd and Trinity Drive. At this set of lights, turn immediately left following the Rotary Pavilion signage the short distance into the Pavilion which is situated aside the trails leading into Mapleton Park. This third set of lights is the last one before the TransCanada Highway.

From Rte 15 (Wheeler Blvd), take Mapleton Rd. exit and travel north on Mapleton Rd. as listed above. Coming from the TCH, take the Mapleton Rd. exit # 454. At the first set of lights coming into the city (South on Mapleton Rd.) turn right into Mapleton Park and the Rotary Pavilion which is less than 1 minute from the TCH. Click Click HERE for a map. 

All are welcome, members - non-members.

        Beginning of Moncton Naturalists’ Club, Now Nature Moncton.

End of September, as the autumn colours brighten the countryside, a ceremony was taking place in Harvey Hall, Albert County. We called it a celebration of Mike Majka’s life, because we wanted to celebrate his life rather than mourn his death. When I was thinking about it later, I realized how very important Mike was in the creation of the Moncton Naturalists’ Club.

Growing up in the country Mike was early acquainted with nature. He had no books or even a knowledgeable buddy but he once told me that he kept a "secret chest," a wooden box in which he collected all sorts of mosses and lichens, snails and bugs, something he showed to nobody in fear that his mother would not allow him to keep it. "When I was alone, I would open that box and enjoy my terrarium," he said.

This interest continued when Mike, as a student in Austria, climbed high peaks of the Alps and hiked its lush valleys. It wasn’t until he landed in Canada that this interest became a serious life-long passion.

I have been trying to pinpoint a happening that I thought was the beginning of his fascination with birds. It was a weekend we were spending in the wilderness of northern Ontario. We drove for hours from our home in London to a rented cottage in the Huntsville area. At one of the stops, the sweet song of a bird made us speculate what it could be. (It was a White-throated Sparrow.) On arrival at the cottage, two most beautiful, large birds with gray and blue feathers greeted us in the yard. (They were Blue Jays.) All through that stay, to our elation but also frustration, we saw birds but could not identify them. There was an eerie, haunting call on the lake, a hooting voice at night, a twitter, a whistle, but who were they? On our return home, it became mandatory to find out.

Luckily, Mike knew that one of his colleagues in the hospital, Dr. Marven Smout, was a birdwatcher. "He has got a book," Mike told me, "depicting all the birds. I will borrow it from him and we will be able to identify them all."

In our ignorance, we imagined that book would contain a few dozen birds, and it would be no difficulty to read up on them and identify them in the field. We were flabbergasted therefore, when we leafed through the Peterson guide to birds. "This is only for the eastern part of North America," Mike commented, with a hopeless sigh. I closed the book in resignation.

"Give that book back to Dr. S." I told Mike. "Never in my life will I ever learn which bird is which." What an irony that, with my own interest spiked and through Mike’s coaxing, I did learn to identify them after all!