Mt Albert 25 Feb - a few Silvereyes

Had an early banding session at the Mt Albert fennel patch this morning. Not a lot of birds about but managed to catch 10, with the exception of 1 Dunnock all were Silvereyes 8 new and 1 recapture. The recap was a little cracker, banded 13 Feb 06 so is aged 8+ notour oldest but still not bad for a little bird.

Island Bay 23 Feb - Sparrows & more Sparrows

Bernard and I had a very busy morning at Island Bay this morning catching a total of 147 birds. We ran out of BP bands and had to let several Sparrows go otherwise we would have easily got to 150. Although we caught 7 species by far the majority were House Sparrows and nearly all birds caught were juveniles.
Species caught - (recaps in brackets)
Blackbird - 6 (1) all juveniles

The early fledged Blackbirds are moulting their body feathers and look a bit unusual

Chaffinch - 2 (0)
Dunnock - 4 (1) all juveniles
Silvereye - 1 (0)
Starling - 1 (0)
Tui - 1 (0) had several others bounce
House Sparrow - 123 (7) Sparrows have had a long and very successful breeding season and are still   producing young as they have for the last 5-6 months.

Newly fledged sparrow

Juvenile male Sparrow starting to show some colour

Another young male with a bit more colour

Houghton Bay - Wednesday 20 Feb.

I got back yesterday from a week in Canterbury so no banding but had an enjoyable time and managed to get a bit of birding in.

This afternoon I spent a bit of time at the Houghton Bay stream and caught 46 birds of 8 species with 41 new and 5 recaptures.
Species caught were - (recaps in brackets)
Chaffinch - 3 (0)
Goldfinch - 1 (0)
Greenfinch - 1 (1) the recap was originally banded in Island Bay in July 10, it has been recaptured twice at the Zoo, in June 11 and May 12. So it gets around a bit.
House Sparrow - 2 (0)
Dunnock - 1 (0)
Silvereye - 31 (2) one of the recaps was banded Oct 11, the other Nov 11.
Fantail - 2 (2) both recaps were banded Nov 12, 1 as an adult the other a juvenile. The juv has gone through its body moult and is almost indistinguishable from an adult. The 2 new birds were recently fledged birds.
Tui - 3 (0) one was a recently fledged juvenile that was blind in one eye.

Didn't do any banding while down south but did some netting, very similar to mist netting but in a different medium and a different end result for those captured.

In many ways netting for flounder is similar to mist netting for birds and these ones tasted good.

Prince of Wales Park - Sat 8 Feb

Matu had a banding session at the stream in Prince of Wales Park on Saturday and has just sent through the details. He was holding a training session for a couple of people from Zealandia and they caught 25 birds of 6 species, all were new so we will still have to wait for our first recap at this new site.

Birds caught were Goldfinch 5, Greenfinch 8, Chaffinch 6, Silvereye 5, House Sparrow 3 and 1 Fantail.

Stream mist netting - 8 & 9 Feb

I have had 2 short banding sessions at streams in the last couple of days with contrasting success and neither session resulting in large numbers.

Houghton Bay - 8 Feb.

Spent a couple of hours at the Houghton Bay stream Friday afternoon. Managed to catch 42 birds with 40 new and 2 recaps. Both recaps were Silvereye - 1 from a couple of weeks ago and the other a year ago.

Other birds caught were - 

Dunnock - 1

Fantail - 2

Greenfinch - 6 one bird that at first glance looked like a juvenile female was moulting its primaries.

The juvenile looking female Greenfinch moulting primaries

Goldfinch - 4 - in sharp contrast to recent sessions all were adults

House Sparrow - 3

Silvereye - 24 (2)

Zoo Stream - 9 Feb

Went to the stream over the fence from the Zoo this morning and only caught 9 birds with only 1 being a recap.

Chaffinch - 4

Greenfinch - 2 plus a recap that was banded at Houghton Bay a couple of weeks ago.

Fantail - 1

Grey Warbler - 1

Prince of Wales Park, 2 Feb - A new site

Matu organised a session at the stream in the Prince of Wales Park today which proved very successful and shows a lot of promise for future sessions. It is relativity close to Zealandia and although we didn't catch any of their introduced birds we did have Kaka flying around with Bellbird heard and Whitehead have also been seen recently in the area.

Today we caught a total of 68 birds, all new. I had hoped that we might have got a recap from one of our other sites but no such luck.
Species caught were -
Blackbird - 1
Chaffinch - 6
Greenfinch - 10
Goldfinch - 38 this is the highest day's total at any site and all but 5 were juveniles.
Silvereye - 3
House Sparrow - 7
Yellowhammer - 1
Dunnock - 1
Tui - 1

The Council is doing some tree removal at this site this week which will undoubtedly affect it but hopefully won't make too much difference.

Zoo Stream, 1 February - More juveniles

Gen, Nick and I had a session at the Stream or what is left of it over the fence from the Zoo this afternoon. We also had Don the Manager of the DOC Banding Office join us for a period. The catching was surprisingly slow but this gave us a bit of time to talk a few things over with Don, which was good, and also to catch up with Gen and Nick as it is the first time I have seen them since they took over the ranger position on Kapiti Island.

We did manage to catch 30 birds with 29 new and only 1 recapture.  This was a Silvereye which was banded at the Houghton Valley School in May 2010. Other birds caught were 15 Goldfinch, 7 Chaffinch, 2 Greenfinch, 1 House Sparrow, 3 Silvereye and 1 Tui. With the exception of 3 of the Goldfinch and the Silvereye most of the birds were juveniles.

One of the juvenile Chaffinch had a very prominent growth bar.
 

Two of the Goldfinch caught together might have been Mother and Daughter