Zoo Saturday 21 April

We had a very successful day’s banding at the Zoo on Saturday. Conditions were near perfect for banding most of the day, a little too much sun for brief periods but then some cloud would role over. In all we caught 114 birds of 9 species with 92 new birds and 22 recaptures. There was a good turn out of people with a couple of keen youngsters, even so, we were very busy for the first couple of hours and perhaps could have done with another experienced bander. After the initial rush there was still a steady flow of birds and as we were taking nets down every net contained birds.

Hine with Silvereye

 Species caught were – (Recaps in brackets)

Blackbird – 1 (0) a surprisingly low tally.

Dunnock – 1 (0)

Chaffinch – 4 (0)

Greenfinch – 6 (7) One of the recaps was banded in April 08, one in June 09 another was banded at the Zoo in April 11 recaptured at Houghton Bay in Aug 11 and is now back at the Zoo.

House Sparrow – 38 (2) one of the recaps was originally banded at Bridie’s on

Hornsey Rd.



One of the Sparrows had an unusual moult pattern on it's right wing with two very bent feathers



Starling – 1 (0)

Silvereye – 39 (12) 3 of the recaps were banded at the Mt Albert fennel patch last month.

Grey Warbler – 2 (0)

The first Grey Warbler rated on eye colour as a 1

Tui – 0 (1) a colour banded bird caught in the same net in Sept 09. It has been sight recorded a couple of time around the Zoo area and has now lost one of it’s bands.



The Tui, a female and now at least 5 years old



As well as the banding the opportunity was taken to collect blood samples from some birds for avian malaria screening as part of a study being undertaken by DOC.

Blood being collected from a House Sparrow