Island Bay Saturday 21 Sept - Sparrows & Rain

I woke up to the sound of rain on the roof, then it stopped so headed off for our planned banding session at Island Bay. Unfortunately the rain started again as I arrived so spent an hour in the car before it cleared enough to put nets up at about 9. I had a reasonably busy time until reinforcements arrived in response to my texts and then, according to sods law, the flow of birds dried up.This was probably due to them having fed  to their hearts' content while I sat in the car. The rain recommenced after a couple of hours so we packed up early and headed home. We did manage to catch 33 birds of 4 species with 24 new and 9 recaps.

The "Team" Annette, Kate, Mary (our scribe), Ross, Kat, & Bronwyn

Birds caught were - Recaps in brackets)
Blackbird - 1 (3)
Chaffinch - 1 (0)
House Sparrow - 21 (6)

Kate banding one of the Sparrows.

Starling - 1 (0)

We have had a couple of Blackbird recoveries reported from the Zoo. One was of a bird eaten by the Meerkats; not an old bird but interesting in a bizarre way. A European bird eaten by an African mammal on the other side of the world in New Zealand. The other bird was perhaps more significant as it was banded 3 August 2003 and at 3696 days is our second oldest Blackbird recovery at any site. Our oldest Blackbird recovery at 4024 days was also reported by Zoo staff which reinforces the fact that we are very fortunate to have them taking an interest in our banding and reporting the recoveries.

I am off to Australia for the next few weeks so there is unlikely to be any new posts for a while.