Island Bay Tuesday 15 July - Another quieter day.

Annette, Ros and I had a quiet and very cold session at our Island Bay site this morning. There was a stiff, cold southerly blowing but despite this we had an enjoyable morning. Numbers were down considerably on last year but we did catch some interesting birds. A total of 31 birds were caught with only 3 species, 20 new and 11 recaps. Last year in our July session we caught 126 birds with the biggest difference being that we caught 56 Silvereye, today I didn't even see one.

 Ros & Annette processing two of the Blackbirds

Birds caught were - Chaffinch 2 new.
Blackbird - 3 new and 6 recaps. This is the most Blackbird recaps we have ever caught in 1 day at this site and 2 were over the 5 year mark. D-194374 banded Dec 2008, 2048 days ago as a Juv.   And D-194313 banded Sept 2008, 2118 days ago as a 1 year old. This bird is now the oldest bird of any species banded and recaptured at this site. He is also one of the biggest Blackbirds we have ever caught weighing in at 116.6g and with a wing length of 139mm. Last time he was caught, in Aug 2012, he weighed 93.2g and had a wing length of 132mm.

Mr Fatty

House Sparrow - 15 new and 5 recaps. One of the Males had an extraordinarily long lower mandible but despite this was slightly above average in both weight and wing length. How it feeds I don't know, perhaps it eats sideways like a Wrybill.

A feature of the day was that all but one of the recaps were known aged birds due to the fact that we are able to each spring catch a significant number of the juveniles, this especially applies to the Blackbirds with the two older recaps aged as 6 and 7.