Queenstown - Last banding for a while.

It started raining this morning about 6 o'clock and carried on intermittently for most of the day so not much chance of any banding. Yesterday however I did manage to catch a few birds. In the morning I put nets up in the house area and in the afternoon I gave the stream a try. Although not a huge number of birds caught I ended up with 30 for the day 15 AM & 15 PM.

Combined list of species was -
Chaffinch - 5 (0)
Redpoll - 6 (0)
Yellowhammer - 1 (1) So far this year I have caught 7 Yellowhammers, 4 new and 3 recaps. Contrast this with 174 Redpolls all new birds (no recaps) and almost all young birds. I suspect that they are moving through going from somewhere to somewhere else, I would love to know from where to where?
Blackbird - 2 (0)

All the new Blackbirds caught this trip have been young males

Dunnock - 3 (1)
House Sparrow - 2 (3)
Silvereye - 2 (0)
Bellbird - 2 (1) the recap was actually one of the new birds, it was caught and banded in the morning and then recaptured in the afternoon at the stream a distance of about 500m

The twice caught Bellbird, a juvenile female

Last but not least another new Fantail, this makes it 2 this week compared to only 1 in the previous18 months.

The new Fantail, aged as a 1st year bird by a couple o retained juvinile coverts.