Halswell Quarry Thursday 15 Oct - not many birds but some were interesting.

 We had a pretty quiet session at the Quarry this morning although there were some interesting birds amongst the catch. Conditions were very much on the cold side with a dying southerly wind. There were 12 birds of 4 species processed with 8 new and 4 recaps.

Species were (recaps in brackets)

Blackbird - 2 (1) the recap was banded almost exactly a year ago on 18 Oct 19

House Sparrow - 5 (1) the recap was banded at Jan's place about 2km away back in July.

Dunnock - 1 (0)

Chaffinch - 0 (2) these birds, 1 F, 1 M were banded in Dec 2017 at exactly the same net site as caught today. Neither have been caught in between, the female was the 2nd Chaffinch banded at the Quarry and they are at 1043 days the oldest of any species we have recaptured there. The first bird of the day was the male Chaffinch recap.

We also had a recovery in the form of a Blackbird found earlier by Jan's husband, John while walking their dog. Found about 200m from where it was banded.

Halswell Quarry, Thursday 1 October - Some birds but not a lot.

We had a session at the Quarry this morning. After a frost the day was sunny with a stiffening breeze. We had a bit of a problem with dogs on the loose, one went under a net at speed but fortuanately except for a broken trammel line didn't cause much damage. Another was in hot pursuit of a Hare, both went under a net at speed, fortunatly the net was set high and again no great damage was done. Later the sun was on the 2 main nets making them very visable. We ended up with 17 birds processed, 11 new Silvereyes and 1 recap which had been banded at Jan's on Kenerdys Bush Rd about a couple of km's away. The others were all new, 2 Starlings, 2 House Sparrows and a Blackbird. The team today consisted of Ririka, Alice, Kenny and a new trainee Babs.