A group of us had a session at our Island Bay site this morning, unfortunately it was fairly quite with an exceptional lack of variety. Ken had warned me that bird numbers were low, no doubt due to an abundance of natural food in the form of seeds and berries about at the moment. The catch rate was further reduced by rain shortly after the nets were erected making it necessary to close them for a period.
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| Gathered round the table drinking coffee instead of banding birds (But still very enjoyable) |
We managed to catch 29 birds, all House Sparrows with 22 new and 7 recaptures. Almost all the Sparrows have now finished or almost finished with 23 having a primary wing score of 44 or 45.
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| A bird with P9 still showing a bit of sheath and scored at 44. In a couple of days it will be a full 45 |
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| This male has completed its moult and is looking very handsome. |
However there was a recap that appeared to be struggling to get its moult completed.When banded as a juvenile last month it had just started moult with its primaries scored at 5, 4, 2, 0,0,0,0,0,0 = 11 now it has 5,4,4,4,1,0,0,0,0 = 18. P2 doesn't seem to have continued to grow and other feathers are very slow. Feathers are scored between 0 (old) and 5 (new).
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Still only having a score of 18 this young fellow might struggle over the next few months.
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