Island Bay, Sat. 25 Feb.

Annette, Zoe, Tom and I had a successful morning's banding at Island Bay on Saturday, although the tally was very biased towards one species and almost all the birds were juveniles. In all we caught 74 birds of 6 species with 73 new and only 1 recapture.



Annette, Zoe & Tom processing more Sparrows.



Species caught were –

Blackbird – 7

Chaffinch – 3

Dunnock – 2

Fantail – 1

Grey Warbler – 1

House Sparrow – 58 and 1 recapture, a bird from the last session.



I was speaking to a chap this morning (Sunday) who lives in the centre of London and he commented how good it was to see House Sparrows as they are a rear sight now in London. That sure is in contrast to what we have here in Wellington.

Sparrows enjoying some fine dining in Central Wellington.



Today was the first time we have used a large number of the new "BP" size bands, initially we found them very strange but after we worked out a good method of putting them on they appear satisfactory.