Halswell Quarry 20 June - a better catch.

We had a session at the Halswell Quarry this morning our first banding for a while with last weeks planned session cancelled for a variety of reasons. We had a much better catch than recent sessions with a total of 38 birds of 7 species caught. There were 36 new and a couple of recaps. I had hoped for a few more recaps, especially as the first bird caught was one, but it wasn't to be.

We were joined today by Colin who is a L3 bander and Steve one of his trainees. Colin is starting to do some banding and training at his place a few Ks away and hopefully we will get to swap birds.

The team for the day. Phil, Steve, Colin, Kenny, Andrew and seated Jan who admirably performed the duties of scribe in the absence of Sandra our usual one.

Species caught were - (recaps in brackets)
Blackbird - 1
Dunnock - 3

One of the Dunnocks had what appeared to be an old break in its right leg that had healed leaving a large swelling.

House Sparrow - 16 (1)
Greenfinch - 9 (1)
Silvereye - 4
Bellbird - 2

Andrew with the first Bellbird

Steve extracted and banded the second Bellbird, which was also the last bird of the day.