Houghton Bay - Saturday 25 August

Ros and I had a session at the Houghton Bay stream this morning with reasonable success. In all we caught 56 birds but there wasn't much variety with only 3 species.

First bird caught was a female Blackbird  which had an unusual tail pattern with the entire tail covered with small bars/lines. These did not appear to be growth bars as they were very even and spread down the length of the feathers.

The Blackbird's tail with the bars unfortunately not showing very well in the photo

Next bird caught was a female Chaffinch and all the rest were Silvereyes, with 50 new birds and 4 recaptures. Only 1 of the recaps was banded at this site with 1 from my place banded in July 2011, 1 from the Gully below my house and 1 from Bridie's just down the road. Interestingly only 1 of the over 2000 Silvereyes that have been banded at the Houghton Bay stream since we started banding there in Jan 2008 have been recaptured.

One of the Silvereyes appeared to be going through at least a partial tail moult which is odd for this time of year.

Silvereye tail with retained central feathers and moulted outer ones

Hornsey Road - Friday 24 August

I put up a couple of nets in the morning to see what was about and then in the afternoon operated the trap at Bridie's for a couple of hours. Didn't catch a lot of birds but did have a bit of variety. Caught a total of 9 birds of 5 species, 2 recap Blackbirds, 2 new and 1 recap Starling, 2 recap Greenfinch, 1 recap Dunnock and a recap Sparrow. No Silvereye were caught. Almost all of the Silvereyes left the area about 3 weeks ago, which is the same time as they left last year, so we will wait and see if they return mid October as happened last year.