Wellington Totals for 2015/16 year

It's raining here today so I have crunched the numbers for the birds caught in Wellington for the banding year to 31 March. The totals were down by about 50% on previous years, mainly due to very little banding going on for the last few months of the year.

We caught 1543 new birds of 20 species and made 913 recaptures of 11 species. The species total is a record due to several new species being caught during a field trip to Mana & Matu/Somes Islands. During this trip Yellow crowned Parakeet, Red crowned Parakeet, N I Robin and Whitehead were added to the groups species list.

Species totals for the year ranked in order were - (recaps in brackets)

1. Silvereye - 819 (768) back in No 1 spot after dropping to No 2 last year.
2. House Sparrow - 209 (48)
3. Greenfinch - 174 (46)
4. Blackbird - 87 (22)
5. Chaffinch - 81 (6)
6. Dunnock - 32 (10)
7. Tui - 27 (2)
8. Goldfinch - 25 (3)
9. Yellowhammer - 20
10. Bellbird - 17 (1) all the new birds were caught on Mana Is. The recap was at the Karori Cemetery.
11. Grew Warbler - 11 (6)
12. Yellow crowned Parakeet - 11
13. Whitehead - 7
14. Fantail - 6 (1)
15. Kingfisher - 5 most were caught on Mana Is.
16. Starling - 3 an all time low not sure why, there appeared to be plenty about.
17. Song Thrush - 2
18. Eastern Rosella - 1
19. Red crowned Parakeet - 1
20. N. I. Robin - 1