Island Bay Wednesday 13 August - Mostly Sparrows

Ros and I had a successful morning's banding on Wednesday morning catching, more than twice as many birds than at the session at this site last month.

Ros concentrating on extracting a male Sparrow; 1 of many.

We caught 65 birds of 4 species with 50 new and 15 recaptures. As is usual at this site the catch was dominated by House Sparrows with 46 new birds and 9 recaps. There was a big sex ratio difference in the Sparrows caught with 38 being male and only 17 female.
Other species were Blackbird 1 new, 4 recaps. Dunnock 2 recaps and Chaffinch 3 new birds, all male.

Chaffinch males are developing full breeding plumage and are singing full song   

A feature was the total lack of Silvereye with none seen or heard.  There were however a few Tui about but none found the nets although 3 were hooning about very close.  Not sure whether we wanted all 3 to go in or not? One at a time is usually enough.