Queenstown totals for year 2016/17

I have recently crunched the numbers of birds caught for the year ending 31 March. This is in order to file the annual report to the Banding office. A total 1619 captures of 16 species was made with 1177 new birds banded and 442 recaptures made.

	15/16	R/C	Rank	16/17	R/C	Rank
Species	16	12		16	13
House Sparrow	293	85	1	385	180	1
Silvereye	145	45	3	233	47	2
Redpoll	259	17	2	196	3	3
Tui	5	1	13	64	42	4
Chaffinch	79	34	4	55	23	5
Blackbird	49	42	5	55	48	6
Dunnock	48	29	6	52	40	7
Bellbird	8	1	12	35	41	8
Yellowhammer	17	4	11	31	9	9
Greenfinch	21	0	8	25	1	10
Song Thrush	27	10	7	16	4	11
Goldfinch	19	3	9	14	2	12
Starling	19	6	10	9	2	13
Cal Quail	x	x	x	3	0	14
Fantail S I	1	0	15	2	0	15
Grey Warbler	1	0	16	2	0	16
Kingfisher	4	0	14	0	0	17
	995	277		1177	442

Species caught ranked from highest number of new bird was (with recaptures in brackets)

1. House Sparrow- 385 (180) also No 1 last year.
2. Silvereye - 233 (47) up one position mainly due to good catches in the neighbours orchard.
3. Redpoll - 196 (3) down from 2nd but a disappointing number of recaps.
4. Tui - 64 (42) a big jump up from 13th, also a good number of recaptures.
5. Chaffinch - 55 (23) down fro 4 with a significant drop in numbers.
6. Blackbird - 55 (48) down from 5th.
7. Dunnock - 52 (40) also down one position.
8. Bellbird - 35 (41) a jump up from 12th with a significant increase in numbers, especially in recaps.
9. Yellowhammer - 31 (9) up from 11th.
10. Greenfinch - 25 (1) down from 8th
11. Song Thrush 16 (4) down from 7 with a significant drop in numbers.
12. Goldfinch - 14 (2) down from 9.
13. Starling - 9 (2) a drop in rank from 10 and in numbers.
14. Californian Quail - 3 (0) first birds caught.
15. Fantail - 2 (0) should be ably to catch more but they are tricky little birds.
16. Grey Warbler - 2 (0) very much a bycatch.
17. Kingfisher - none caught  and very few about. They arrived late winter and then left with none staying to breed. In the previous year there were about 4-5 pairs breeding in the area.