Zoo Stream - an old bird

I have had a couple of session at the little stream over the Zoo fence in the last few days. Had a 2 hour session on Saturday afternoon 15 Dec and another this morning 17 Dec. Part of the reason was to compare the catch rate between morning and afternoon and with some species there appears to be a difference. Caught 27 birds Saturday PM and 31 this morning so the overall the numbers caught were very similar. In all there were 52 new birds and 6 recaptures, the recapture rate is low but the majority of the catch were newly fledged juveniles. Among the recaps was a very good one and it is now the oldest of the species caught by the group.

Species caught were - (Recaps in brackets)
Blackbirds - 5 (1) all were caught in the AM session.
Song Thrush - 2 (0) this makes 3 in the last week, both caught this morning.
Chaffinch - 10 (1) 7 caught PM, 4 caught AM. The recap was banded 30 Nov 2005 and is now at 2574 days the oldest recapture of a Chaffinch at any of our sites. It was the second to last bird caught this morning.
Goldfinch - 19 (1) the 13 caught this morning is I think the most caught in one day, most were newly fledged juvs.
Greenfinch - 9 (0) 6 on Sat afternoon and 3 this morning and included the first juveniles for the year.
Silvereye - 1 (1) 1 each day and an extremely low number for this site.
Fantail - 0 (1)
Grey Warbler - 1 (0)
Tui - 5 (0) all except 1 caught in the afternoon and the one this morning was the last bird caught.