Queenstown Sat 5 Aug - a lot more little green jobs.

Now back in Christchurch after a short trip south. Sorry about this late post but things got a bit busy after spending most of Saturday with nets up. Didn't actually spend that much time banding more like recording numbers. Ended the day having caught 81 individual birds, the actual number of handlings would have been at least twice that as many Silvereyes were caught multiple times. I know I caught the first bird of the morning, Ap-19310 at least 6 times. This is the most birds I have caught in one day at this site.

There were 7 species caught with 33 new and 48 recaptures. By far the majority were Silvereyes with 24 new and 42 recaps. With a total of 66 individuals caught this is the highest number of both total birds and silvereye recaps caught in one day. Twenty four of the Silvereyes were also caught 2 days ago and 38 were new for the month which probably means that there has been considerable movement within the population. Four of the recaps had been banded in Sept 2015 within a week or two of starting banding here including the oldest bird from Thursday which is now 2 days older at 687 days.

There was also a few non Silvereyes caught -
Chaffinch - 2 (0)
Dunnock - 1 (2)
House Sparrow - 3 (0)
Starling - 1 (0)
Bellbird - 1 (4) the new bird was male and the recaps 1 female 3 male including the oldest recap for the species. Five birds in a day is the highest total for Bellbirds.

Adult Male Bellbird

Adult Female Bellbird

Wing of Adult Male Bellbird showing wingtip aging feature

Tui - 1 (0)

The wing of the new Tui showing the lack of a "notch" - aging it as a first year bird.