Thursday 16 June - A busy morning.

 We had a session at Jan's place on Kennedys Bush Rd Thursday morning. With only a small team and a constant flow of birds we were kept pretty busy. We processed a total of 51 birds with 47 being new and only 4 recaps. There were only 3 species caught with 1 new Blackbird, 3 new House Sparrows with 1 recap, and 43 new Silvereyes with 3 recaptures. With only 2 nets up 1x12m, and 1x 6m  we were constantly extracting Silvereyes preventing the more weary species from being caught.

The Blackbird was colour banded to help Jan keep track of "Her" Blackbirds.

Laura giving Fraser who is a new trainee advice on banding one of his first birds. Not surprisingly a Silvereye.

The recap House Sparrow was banded last year at Ruud's place which is only a hundred m or so away. All the Silvereyes were banded at this site, two last year and the other in June 2019. So at 1085 days from banding it is a reasonably old bird.

An Interesting House Sparrow Capture

I received a photo from Andrew who has, since obtaining his Level 2 permit, has been doing some banding at his property in Rolleston. The photo was of a deformed leg of a House Sparrow which has what could be called a Club Foot with no claws. Whether this was caused by birth defect or an accident is anybody's guess but would be interesting to know.