Not much banding being done

My projected 3 days in Hospital turned into nearly 3 weeks so no banding done. Yesterday 30 Oct I had my first attempt setting the funnel trap and managed to catch 12 birds before a side effect of my surgery caused the unsetting of the trap and I was back in Hospital for the night.

Of the birds caught there were 3 new House Sparrow + 1 recap, 1 new Greenfinch +1 which was banded at the Zoo last year in May and 2 new Silvereye with 4 recaptures.

Probably won't be much banding for a while but I am hoping to have sessions at Island and Houghton Bays and possible the Zoo in the next few weeks.

Hornsey Rd 7 October - Silvereyes

I set the funnel trap here this morning and caught 31 birds.  Almost all were Silvereyes which have returned to the area in the last couple of weeks. Of the 26 caught only 2 were new but 9 of the recaptured birds had not been caught at this site this year. Of the 11 that had been banded in 2012 6 had been banded at the Mt Albert site last autumn. The oldest one caught was banded in June 2007 so was of a reasonable age.

Other birds caught were 3 new Greenfinch and 1 recap and a new Blackbird.

It's unlikely that there will be another post for at least a week as I am off for a bit of an op tomorrow which will put me out of action for a while. 

Not much banding this week.

With 2 grandchildren staying and a bad forecast most days there has not been much banding going on. I did manage to get down to the Houghton Bay Stream for a while but there were very few birds about, only caught 4 Silvereyes with 1 in moult.

Also set the trap at Bridie's for a while one evening but didn't catch many birds. However, I did recapture a Blackbird that was banded 5 Sept 2004. This bird is now our oldest recaptured Blackbird at any site, although we have had an older bird but that was recovered dead. The latest recapture was banded as an age 1 and now is age 11. This bird has been recaptured 10 times already and hopefully we will catch it again over the next few years.