Prince of Wales Park - Saturday 30 March

Matu held a banding session this morning at the Prince of Wales Park and had reasonable success. Not a big number of birds but a steady flow which was good as we used it to also train and refresh Ruby, Bernard and Ben who work at Zealandia, in banding and handling birds. In all we caught 50 birds of 9 species, only 1 was a recapture but this is the first recap at this new site.

Species caught were -
Blackbird - 1
Chaffinch - 1 (1) the recap was banded about 5 weeks ago at our last session there.
Greenfinch - 2
Goldfinch - 14

Ruby, Ben and Bernard with 3 Goldfinch, all 1st year birds but at different stages of moult

House Sparrow - 2
Dunnock - 2
Grey Warbler - 3

Ruby with her first Grey Warbler just out of the net

And now it's banded

Fantail - 2
Silvereye - 10
Kingfisher - 1 This is the first Kingfisher we have caught in this banding year which finishes tomorrow so only just makes it into the stats for the year.

The first and only Kingfisher for the year.