Island Bay - Saturday 18 August

Gen, Nick, Aussie Graeme (A replacement for Aussie Mick who has returned to Australia) Ros, Bernard and I had a good session at Island Bay this morning with almost ideal conditions; except like most of the country at the moment it was a bit wet underfoot. There was a steady flow of birds with no big catches, about 6 would have been the max at any one time. In all we caught 47 birds of 5 species with 41 new and 8 recaptures.

Species caught were – (Recaps in brackets)

Blackbird – 2 (2) both the recaps were of a reasonable age, 1 banded in 09 and the other on 28 Sept 08 and is now at 1422 days the oldest Blackbird recaptured at the site. All the birds were male and over 2 year old.

Chaffinch – 6 (1) All 7 birds were also male.

Gen extracting one of the Chaffinch

A general discussion on the age of one of the Chaffinch

House Sparrow – 25 (3) the oldest recap was banded as an adult in Dec 10
We had a recovery report this week of a Sparrow caught by a cat in Russell Tce, Berhampore, it had been banded at the Island Bay site on 12 Feb 08 and at 1644 days our oldest recap/recovery of a Sparrow from this site. 

Silvereye – 3 (0) a very low tally, they seem to have left most artificially fed sites. 

Tui – 5 (0) the first 3 to hit the nets bounced out and then they started to stick.

Nick & Bernard taking the Head-Bill measurement of a Tui

Interesting that the total number of birds caught today was very similar to August last year when we caught a total of 49 but the species were very different, as last year it was dominated by Greenfinch with 36, this year I didn’t even see one.

Thanks once again to Marion and Ken for their great hospitality including a scrumptious morning tea.