We have continued to be successful with our Harrier trapping and banding. We moved some traps from out in the country to be nearer Christchurch on a farm on Cashmere Rd. We had the traps set there for about a week last winter and were happy with 3 birds caught. This time with actual trapping time restricted by wet weather we banded 10 new birds and recaptured 3. Two of the recaps had been banded recently but the other was 1 of the 3 from last year. This bird is now our oldest recapture being just short of a year. Part of the purpose of this study is to follow the changes in eye colour as a bird ages. They have dark brown eyes when first fledged, this changes to a pale yellow in an old bird.
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| Ruud holding one of the new Cashmere birds. A youngster with a dark brown eye. . |
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Kenny holding the first Harrier he has banded. An old female with a pale
yellow eye. |
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| The recap showing a paler eye |
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| The darker brown eye of a year ago. |
There have also been birds caught at our Motukarara site. Three new and four recaptures, the oldest recap was banded back in February.
We have also had an interesting recovery reported. A banded bird was found in a winter feed crop on Milltown Rd about 2km from where it was banded. It was in very poor condition, very light and unable to stand, it died shortly after being found. It had obviously been there for a considerable time having trampled down an area of crop It is presumed that the bird had dropped into the foliage after prey and had been unable to fly out this would have been accentuated by everything being wet including its plumage.
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| The unfortunate bird as it was found. |
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