Annette, Ros and I had an extremely busy time at our Island Bay site this morning. Due to heavy early rain the session was initially cancelled then the rain eased and we decided to give it a go. Although the start was over an hour later than we had hoped, and we lost netting time as showers went through, we still managed to catch 140 birds with 123 new and 17 recaps. The catch, as usual at this site, was dominated by House Sparrows and with only 4 species there wasn't much variety. The lack of variety was probably due to the fact that with putting the net up and down and spending considerable time at the net extracting birds the more cautious species stayed away.
Species caught were -
Blackbird - 3 (1)
Starling - 4 (1)
House Sparrow - 111 (13) the oldest was banded Jan 2011 and a considerable number were newly fledged Young. This is the highest total catch of Sparrows at any site we have made in one day.
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Although most of the Juv. Sparrows could not be sexed this one was already showing some male colouring.
Photo by Ros (I forgot my camera) |
Tui - 5 (2) one of the recaps was banded at this site in Nov 2011 and the other was the highlight of the morning. It was banded by Ralph at Roseneath on 25 July 2009. This is the first time it has been recaptured and despite it being colour banded the last sighting was 3 Nov 2009. There were a large number of Tui about and at one stage there were at least 15 visible with another 2 in bags waiting to be processed.
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| Some of the Tui coming down to and at the sugar water bowls. They tend to dominate the table but are very hard to get into the net. Photo by Ros |
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