Another Harrier Update

 Things have been a little quiet on the banding front lately especially with Passerine banding due to rubbish weather and a lack of catchable birds. The only ones have been caught by Ruud at his place when he got a bit bored and put a net up for some practice. He didn't catch much but did recapture a couple of Silvereyes that are almost certainly a pair. They were both banded on the 1 Aug 2019 at Jan's, which is only a about 100m from the recapture site so have probably stayed together for at least several years.

One of Jan's/Ruud's old Silvereyes

We have also attempted to catch some more Harriers with varied success. We have set the trap at Phils on several occasions with only one attempt being successful with two birds caught.  Both sessions were of short duration due to inclement weather. This week we have also set traps on two occasions near Southbridge with four traps set each time. On Monday we had some success with 3 birds caught, Two young birds caught together and an adult female. All were caught in the same trap and I suspect the older bird is the 2 youngsters' mother. Yesterday (11 May) we again set the traps with even less success, with the only catch being the recapture of the adult from 3 days before. The poor result was not because of a lack of birds as we had a number inspecting the traps but not going in. Perhaps they are not hungry at the moment having feasted on some of the duck hunters' mistakes.

The under wing of the Adult showing the moult progress.

The adult with a yellow eye

One of the young birds with its brown eye.

We have had a couple of birds we banded featured on TV this week. If you watched "Seven Sharp" on TV 1 last evening, you might have seen an article on Raptors being presented to a school in Timaru. The two stars were a Harrier and a Little Owl. The keen eyed amongst you might have seen that both birds were banded. This was done at the NZ Raptor Trust property in Timaru with our help.

The TV Star being held by her trainer.

Angie banding the TV star.