Zoo - Friday 31 October

Henk and I put some nets up at the opposite end of the Zoo from our usual site. This was basically an experiment to see what was there. We were joined by Phil and Joakim two of the bird keepers. The catch of 16 birds of 6 species was a bit below what I had hoped for. There were two possible reasons for the lower catch in that a couple of the nets were badly affected by the wind which got up mid morning and bad placement of the nets. Almost all of the birds were caught in 2 nets while a double 12 m caught nothing and I thought that would be the main catching net.
There were 13 new birds and 3 recaps all of which were relatively new Zoo banded birds. Species caught were-
Blackbird - 3 (0)
House Sparrow 2 (0)

Henk taking the wing measurement of 1 of the Sparrows

Dunnock - 3 (0)
Greenfinch - 3 (2)

Phil with one of the Greenfinch

Silvereye - 1 (1)
Tui - 1 (0)

Henk with his Tui

Hornsey Rd - Thu 30 Oct

Yesterday morning I again set the funnel trap  here and also put up a couple of nets for a while. Caught 25 birds of 5 species with all but 3 being recaps. 
Blackbird - 2 (4)
Chaffinch - 0 (1) a bird banded at the Zoo in Dec 2010
Dunnock - 1 (2)
House Sparrow 0 (1)
Silvereye - 0 (14) 4 of the recaps were over 5 years since being banded, 2 banded in 2009, 1 in 2008 and the 2005 bird caught a few days ago.  Surprisingly for the 09 & 08 birds this was the first time they had been caught this year. Hopefully there might be some more old birds out there to be caught.