Zoo Stream Tuesday 3 Nov

Anneke and I spent a couple of hours at the little stream over the fence from the Zoo on Tuesday afternoon. Anneke is now back in Wellington after a period on the West Coast at Hokitika and then some travel including assisting with cannon netting and banding Red Knots in the States (no I am not jealous, the green shade is a reflection off the trees)
Our catch was not a big one with 15 birds but with 8 species we did have variety. I also spent a couple of hours at the stream a couple of weeks ago, mainly to check on the net lines after a large tree had fallen across them. I managed to reorganise things and got some nets up for a while and even caught a few birds.

While some of the nets had to be moved this one was able to go over the smaller end of the tree trunk. 

The combined tallies for the 2 days were - (recaps in brackets)
Blackbird - 2 (0)
Chaffinch - 6 (0)

Anneke about to release her first Chaffinch

Goldfinch - 4 (0)

A couple of the Goldfinch showed a bib difference in head colour

Greenfinch - 2 (0)
Silvereye - 0 (3) 1 was banded Jan 08 so a reasonably old bird.
Song Thrush - 2 (0) this brings the number for the Zoo area to 3 for the year

Anneke checking the band on one of the Song Thrush.

Tui - 3 (1)

Recovery

I received a report of a House Sparrow recovered by a Keeper at the Zoo, it was banded in Feb 07 and is our second oldest Sparrow so far. It was one of a cohort we colour banded and is the first record of one for several years. The fact that it only had 1 colour band left might be a factor in this.