Banding at Jan's Thursday 23 Sept - A pretty quiet morning.

We had a session at Jan's place on Kennedys Bush Rd this morning. The site is next to the Halswell Quarry although at the opposite end from where we usually band. There was only a trickle of birds with a grand total of only 12 processed. All but 1 bird was new with the recapture banded back in June also at this site. Four species were represented, 5 House Sparrows, 4 Silvereyes plus the recap and 1 each of Dunnock and Song Thrush.

One of the Silvereyes had an unusual lump on its eye, possibly connected to the upper eyelid. Barbara, a member of our group is currently down in Fiordland assisting the capture, banding and fitting of transmitters onto Kaka which are certainly much bigger than anything we catch around here.

Cashmere Rd, Thursday 16 Sept - A good morning

We finally had a session at the Cashmere Rd site this morning. This was after having to cancel the last planned one due to going into lockdown a couple of days before. It was good to get some banding done especially with very good conditions after a light frost. There was a good turn out of banders with a wide range of experiance. We tried an experiment with an Owl model, putting it up near a net hoping birds would mob it - a complete failure.

The total for the morning was 55 birds of 6 species processed with all but 2 being new. As is usual at this time of year most were Silvereyes with 42 new and 2 recaps. Two of the new Silvereyes had what I term Scaly Foot. Not sure what causes this but I hope to find out.

The recaps were banded back in July at our first session at this site. Other species were 3 newly fledged Song Thrush, 4 House Sparrows, 2 Dunnocks and last but not least a Bellbird.