Halswell Quarry Thursday 19 March - A mostly Black morning

We had a session at the Quarry this morning at a new site amongst a group of old pear trees. The trees are probably the remnants of the original orchard and had a large amount of fruit both high in the trees and on the ground. Most of the accessible fruit had been taken by foragers leaving damaged fruit on the ground and those that were high up.
We caught 18 birds of 4 species.  All were new with 1 each of House Sparrow & Goldfinch, 2 Silvereye and 14 Blackbirds. This is the highest number of Blackbirds we have caught in a session, the previous highest was 9.

Ruud and our scribe Sandra "busy" at the table while a Blackbird has its weight checked.

Today's team, Ruud, Jan, Sandra, Kenny, Ron and Andrew.

A bit of Non Banding Trivia.

Nets stored in shopping bags

I have for the last 30 odd years kept my nets in plastic shopping bags but with the anti plastic movement (of which I am one) these have come hard to come by. Now they have been banned in case one might go down the plug hole and make its way to the sea. As this photo shows this is not the situation in some other countries.

Plastic in a canal waiting for the rains to wash it out to sea.