Kennedys Bush Rd Thursday 29 July - Ruud's place

A small group had a session in Ruud's garden Thursday morning. This is about 100m from Jan's garden where we have banded over 500 birds in the last 18 months. The session was a good steady one with 79 birds of 5 species processed. There were 74 new and 5 recaptures with the recap rate being much lower than I had expected.

As expected Silvereyes dominated the catch with 54 new and 3 recaps. Two of the recaps were banded at Jan's 13 months ago with the other one banded down in the Quarry near the duck pond one month ago. This poses the question of where the 450 we have banded at Jan's have gone?

House Sparrows  with 16 new and 2 recaps were the next highest species, both recaps were banded at Jan's. Other species were 2 Dunnocks 1 Starling and a Blackbird, all new.

Ruud proved to be an extremely good coffee maker and we were treated to a very good brew, thanks Ruud. We also had the comfort of deck chairs when not busy. 

Today's team Jan, Ruud & Kate.

Halswell Quarry Wed 22 July a good steady morning

We had a session at the Quarry this morning, and with some late additions to the team it proved to be a successful one. I had been expecting a smaller group so hadn't feed as much as normal so was pleased with the result.

Thirty four birds of 6 species were processed with 27 new and 7 recaps. Species caught were (recaps in brackets)
Blackbird - 1 (0)
Dunnock - 0 (1) it was banded at the same site just over a year ago as a first year bird.

The recap Dunnock now in its second year

House Sparrow - 4 (0)
Chaffinch - 2 (0)
Greenfinch - 1 (0)
Silvereye - 18 (5) as we were using the same net site as recent sessions birds have become a little net shy. Two of the recaps were banded in 2018 the rest more recently.
Bellbird - 2 (1) The recap was banded on our first session after lockdown back in May at a fruiting Arbutus tree about 500m away.

The Bellbird recap about to be released

Ruud with "his" Bellbird proudly displaying his red badge of honour.

Jan's Garden Friday 3rd July - A busy morning

We had a very busy morning at Jan’s on Friday. There were birds almost as thick as hair on a cat’s back. By far the most were Silvereyes . There was also a variety of other species but because there was almost always people at the nets extracting Silvereyes others didn’t get a look in. We only had 2 nets up but in order to cope with the number of Silvereyes flocking into them we had to furl one for quite long periods.

We processed 120 birds, a record number for a session, there were 108 new and 12 recaps. As expected Silvereyes made up the bulk with 105 new and 11 recaptures. The recaps were split about even between birds banded at the session 2 weeks ago and those  from last year, with 2 banded down in the Quarry. The only other species caught were 2 House Sparrows and 1 new and 1 recap Greenfinch. The recap Greenfinch was banded down in the Quarry in the Conservation area near the pond  in Sept last year.