Queenstown - several days banding.

We have been down here at Littles Road Dalefield for several days and I have attempted to do banding with very mixed sucess. Rebbeca (Bex) came up from Te Anau at the weekend and we had a session at the stream Sat afternoon which was pretty slow only catching 9 birds. She came here on Sun morning with even less sucess we didn't catch a bird untill after she left when I caught a few. On Monday I had another session at the stream but it was curtailed when it started to rain. This morning (Tuesday) Hayley came to try her skills and with the same setup as we had on Sunday. We caught heaps although of  very little variety with almost all being juvenile House Sparrows.
This evening I set a net up near the house with the hope of catching something differant. Initially it was again Sparrows althugh there was a very old one which was good. Then my Grandson Tom flushed a covey of Californian Quail into the net with me having failed miserably earlier. Of the 12 or so in the covey we caught and banded 8 including an adult Male and Female the rest being juveniles.

The combined totals for the period is (recaps in brackets)
Goldfinch - 6 (0) all caught at the stream.

Bex banding one of the Goldfinch.

Greenfinch - 2 (0)
Redpoll - 1 (0) the first for a while.
Silvereye - 1 (0)
House Sparrow - 39 (6) mostly juveniles but included a bird banded a couple of weeks after we started banding here. It is now at 1238 days from banding our oldest recap of any species recaptured here.

Several of the juvenile Sparrows had very pronounced growth bands

Dunnock - 2 (2)
Californian Quail - 8 (0) by far the biggest catch far exceding the 3 caught in the past.

The Male Quail on left, female on right

One of the juvenile Quail.