Over the last few days we have banded seven Little Owlets in two of our specially designed nesting boxes. This is our highest number banded in a year. The first 3 to be banded were in a box on the outskirts of Rangiora. This box was erected about 18 months ago and appeared to have been used last spring but unfortunately access problems prevented us from checking it out properly. We were more successful this year. On Monday we were able to gain access and got a bit of a surprise as the three chicks were of a bandable size. I had expected them to be much smaller with their mother still in attendance, and hoping to band her also. With the aid of a borrowed ladder and a workshop bench we were able to band the three youngsters.
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| Collecting the victims |
Yesterday, Tuesday, Jan and I checked the occupied box at our Cashmere Rd site and found that the four chicks there, although slightly smaller than the Rangiora birds, were still bandable so they duly received their bling.
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| One of the chicks had what appeared to be a half-swallowed wing protruding from its beak. |
A week or so ago we had a banding session at the Halswell Quarry using the same net sites as the previous session. As is usually the case numbers were down, but we still managed to process 15 birds. Except for 2 recaps all were new but these 2 were interesting. A Chaffinch that was banded on 12 Sept 2019 is now at 1533 days our oldest recapture of this species. The other was a House Sparrow that had been banded 25 May 2018 and at 2008 days a reasonable old bird but it is not our oldest.
Yesterday I received a message from the Banding Office about the death of a Tui that I had banded when I was banding near Queenstown on 20 Sept. 2019. It was found about 3km from its banding site but other details a bit sketchy because of the way it was reported.
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