Houghton Bay Stream 17-18 Sept

I spent an hour at the Houghton Bay stream yesterday, mainly to sort out a new net lane. I put up a couple of nets and caught a few birds while I was there. 1 Silvereye, 1 Chaffinch, 1 House Sparrow and 2 Tui.

I went back this morning as the predicted rain had not arrived. Caught 21 birds of 6 species with 18 new and 3 recaptures.
Species caught were -
Blackbird - 1 (0) The bird was a female breaking a run of 12 males in a row.
Greenfinch - 0 (1) a bird banded here at Hornsey Rd last week.
House Sparrow - 1 (0)
Silvereye - 12 (2) a couple of the new birds were moulting their outer primaries.

One of the Silvereye that were moulting outer primary feathers

One of the recaps had a large unhealthy looking lump where its hind claw should be. There is no record of anything wrong when it was banded in April 2011. It still seemed in reasonable health with a weight  of 12.6 gr which is about average.

"The lump"

Grey Warbler - 2 (0)
Tui - 2 (0) So far this year we have banded 24 Tui at this site. Last year we banded 13, in 2012 we banded 13, 2011 it was 8, in 2010 it was 10 and in both 08 & 07 we banded 7. There has certainly been an increase but whether this years big number is an aberration or not we will have to wait and see.