Zoo Stream 24 Jan

I spent a few hours at the stream over the fence from the Zoo on Tuesday afternoon. After the quiet time at Houghton Bay on Saturday I expected to band a few birds and have a snooze in the shade but I was wrong.

After getting the nets up I furled a couple after the first net round so that I could manage the numbers and even then I took a few short cuts with the processing. In all I caught 61 birds of 6 species with 55 new and 6 recaptures. Not a big recapture rate but most of the birds were juveniles.

Species caught were - (recaps in brackets)
Chaffinch - 18 (0)
Goldfinch - 11 (0) the highest tally ever caught at this site.
Greenfinch - 2 (0)
House Sparrow - 1 (0) the first caught at this site in 6 years even though over the fence sparrows are amongst our top 3
Silvereye - 21 (6) the oldest recap banded in Feb 2010 which in Silvereye terms in not very old.
Tui - 2 (0)

Silvereyes in net waiting their turn to be processed.