Banding Update - March, April

 We haven't been doing a lot of banding over the last month or so. It mostly consisted of a couple of Hospital visits and some Harrier banding.

The Hospital visits were not thankfully of the human kind but wildlife ones. The first was to the South Island Wildlife Hospital at Willowbank. This was the only session with much variety. There was a Kingfisher, 2 Harriers, 2 Little Owls and 2 Moreporks. The latter were the most interesting for me. Pauline who is the Vet and manager of the hospital now does most of the banding, but I pulled rank and banded the first Morepork. I had not banded one before, have caught several in mist nets but was not able to band them as my permit did not cover that particular site. Pauline banded the rest and is becoming very competent. 

The second Hospital visit was to the NZ Raptor Trust in Timaru where there were 7 Harriers waiting for their bling. These were duly banded by Angie and Jenni who are also becoming good at banding these birds.

Angie bands a bird while Jenni holds the dangerous bits.

Most of the birds were youngsters who have yet to learn that cars are dangerous.

We have also caught a number of Harriers at two of our local sites. At Phil's place in Motukarara we have banded 7 birds and recaptured another twice. This is proving a great site for Harriers, not sure if they are all local or if this property is on a flight path, perhaps between Lake Ellesmere and Banks Peninsula.

One of the Motukarara birds saying "If you touch me I will bite your nose off"

In the Lakeside area near Leeston we banded a couple of birds. This was actually a bit disappointing as there were a number of birds about and we had several traps set. Both birds were caught at the same time in the same trap. One was an adult female and the other a young male, I suspect they might have been Mother and Son. There were also two other birds waiting to possibly enter the trap.

Two birds in a trap.

The Young male with its brown eye.

The Older Female with a Yellow eye.

PJ Holding the male.