Houghton Bay 1 Feb - another slowish session

We had a session at the Houghton Bay stream this morning and, as it was at the Zoo stream yesterday, birds were again in low numbers. There was a great turnout of banders with Sarah (the Te Papa one), her partner Kyle and a friend Jim as well as Roisin, Kate and Ross with Neil and Lee joining us later. Despite the lack of birds I think we all had an enjoyable time.

We caught a total of 26 birds of 8 species with all but 1 being new and almost all were juveniles.
Species caught were -
Greenfinch - 6 (0)
Chaffinch - 4 (0)
Goldfinch - 5 (0)

Two Juv Goldfinch were caught together, the one on the right was assessed as a male, the left one female by the amount of white on the tail as well as the nasal hairs.

Silvereye - 2 (1) an extremely low catch for this site. The recap was banded up the valley at the Houghton Valley School in July 2010

The recap Silvereye, now aged as a 5+, a reasonably old bird.

House Sparrow - 5 (0)
Grey Warbler - 1 (0) this bird was processed by Ross, his first Grey Warbler. He has been banding for a long time, and with our group for the last 5 years.  He looked like the cat that had swallowed the Canary when he brought it back.

Fantail - 1 (0)

Roisin banding her first Fantail

Tui - 1 (0)

The Tui, a juvenile by the look of it's neck tuft about a month after fledging.