Island Bay Tuesday 20 Jan - more H Sparrows

Annette, Mary, Kate, Sarah V H and I had a successful session at our Island Bay site this morning. We had very good conditions and as usual great hospitality from our hosts Marion and Ken.

Three of the team at work. Kate about to release a Blackbird while Annette explains some banding  details to our scribe Mary.

We caught 140 birds of  7 species with 121 new and 19 recaps. This is very similar to the December session when we caught 140 with 123 new and 17 recaps but there was a bigger variety today. We didn't catch any Tui, in fact we didn't even see any, just heard a couple. Last month we caught 7 and saw probably 30.

Species caught this morning were - (Recaps in brackets)
Blackbird - 13 (2) all the new birds were juveniles and 1 of the recaps was banded in August 2009 so a reasonably old bird.
Chaffinch - 9 (0) mostly juveniles.
Dunnock - 5 (0) all juveniles.
House Sparrow - 87 (17) The usual dominant species at this site. The oldest recap was banded in Oct 2010. A few of the birds had started moult.
Starling - 4 (0) 3 out of the 4 were in primary wing moult.

A moulting juvenile Starling.

A moulting adult starling.

Silvereye - 2 (0)
Fantail - 1 (0)