Final roundup for 2023 - Mostly Little Owl news.

 We have had no organised sessions for a while, mostly due to the sites we use at this time of year having very few birds. So mostly news about Little Owls and the banding of the usual Kingfisher Puli.

We were asked about six months ago if we could erect a couple of Owl nesting boxes at a site development where there were going to be several mature trees removed. The locals were concerned about the welfare of the resident Little Owls. Two boxes were duly erected then, when I went to check them about a month ago, it was found that one had been stolen. This theft must have taken some doing as the tree that the box was attached to was in a secure property. The thief would have had to have taken a long ladder over the fence and removed half a dozen large screws before retracing their steps. Unfortunately, the remaining box had no residents.

The Little Owl hat had been found on the road

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While I was recently away in Auckland, I received a message that a Little Owl fledgling had been found near the site. After much interchanging of messages, Ruud was the only person available to assist. After further discussion it was decided to place the bird in an old mailbox with the hope that its parents would find it. Unfortunately during the following night it died. After examining photos Ruud took and a discussion with him it was apparent that the bird had left the nest prematurely and was in poor health.

 

On my return to Christchurch, I decided to recheck the remaining box and have a look around. I was just in the process of getting the ladder into position when a lady called out and asked if I was interested in Owls. After a discussion with her it emerged that she had taken her 2-year-old Grandson to the Kids Playground across the road where they had found a baby Owl curled up on some of the equipment. Jan (who had come to assist me) and I retrieved the youngster and finding it in good health with a full crop banded it and placed it securely in the nearest tree. 

The little fella in its new temp home on a bed of dry woodchips.

Being held by Jan after being banded.

Yesterday Ruud and I with the assistance of 2 of his Grandsons banded a brood of five Kingfisher Puli. The nest was in the usual old bank/wall at the Quarry that has been used for at least the last five years. One of Ruud's Grandsons with his small hand did the extractions, but only just.

The last and smallest KF to be banded.

We also took the opportunity to check the Owl Box where we had banded four chicks a couple of weeks ago. There was only one left and it looked ready to fledge and join its siblings in the big wide world.

As it was 35 days ago

Now ready to fledge at about 36 days from hatching

I recently had a report from The Banding Office of an old Tui that I banded when I was living and banding in Wellington. It had been banded on13 March 2014 and was found dead near its banding site on 29 Nov 2023. At 3558 days between banding and recovery it was a pretty old bird.

Wish you all the best for the festive season and for 2024.

Queenstown - Sparrows Galor

We drove down from Christchurch on Tuesday, it was raining when we left and continued for the whole trip and all day Wednesday. Yesterday we woke up to clear skies and Snow on the mountains, this is not supposed to happen in Feb.

To the north Coronet Peak with fresh February snow

And to the south the Remarkables also with fresh snow

I have had a couple of banding sessions of sorts since arriving, On Thursday I caught a few of the birds in the neighbours hen house. Not a lot, a few House Sparrows both new and recaps and 4 Chaffinch recaps. Today (Friday 23 Feb) I had a couple of nets up and banded 34 new birds and made 8 recaptures. By far the majority were juvenile House Sparrows with 28 new and 4 recaps. I probably released as many as I banded as I had to fit in lawn mowing and other chores. Sparrows are still fledging young and there appears to be 100,s about. I doubt if most of these late birds will survive this next winter.
Other birds caught were 4 new and 1 recap Chaffinch, 1 new Greenfinch, 1 recap Bellbird and Dunnock. And 1 new and a recap Tui, the recap was banded as a juvenile a couple of months ago and I was surprised to find it in moult, I catch very few moulting Tui and was not sure if juveniles moulted.

All the new Chaffinch were juveniles

The new Tui was also a juvenile

Queenstown - first session for the year 2018

Had the first banding session for 2018 here yesterday, on 5 Jan. Rachel came over from Lake Hawea to join me. The plan was to catch Tui near the house in the morning as there appeared to be an influx of new birds and then in the afternoon catch Redpolls at the stream. The first half of the plan exceeded expectations but the second had to be cancelled due to rain setting in about midday. A good rain would be great but this was only enough to stop the banding and then it stopped.

We caught 23 birds with 11 new and 12 recaps but only 4 species.
Dunnock - 2 recaps one of which was banded as a nestling 2 years ago, so good to know it made it to adulthood.
House Sparrow - 5 new and 3 recaps. Not targeting Sparrows at the moment so these were really bycatch.
Bellbird - 1 new and 3 recaps.

The Bellbird, an adult male getting its bling.

Tui - 5 new and 4 recaptures. This makes 8 new Tui caught in the last week or so, just when I thought I had most of the locals banded. Included in the catch was a newly fledged bird, the first down here.

Rachel with one of "her" Tui

The smaller throat tuft of a second year male

The larger tuft of an older male.

Queenstown Sat 5 Aug - a lot more little green jobs.

Now back in Christchurch after a short trip south. Sorry about this late post but things got a bit busy after spending most of Saturday with nets up. Didn't actually spend that much time banding more like recording numbers. Ended the day having caught 81 individual birds, the actual number of handlings would have been at least twice that as many Silvereyes were caught multiple times. I know I caught the first bird of the morning, Ap-19310 at least 6 times. This is the most birds I have caught in one day at this site.

There were 7 species caught with 33 new and 48 recaptures. By far the majority were Silvereyes with 24 new and 42 recaps. With a total of 66 individuals caught this is the highest number of both total birds and silvereye recaps caught in one day. Twenty four of the Silvereyes were also caught 2 days ago and 38 were new for the month which probably means that there has been considerable movement within the population. Four of the recaps had been banded in Sept 2015 within a week or two of starting banding here including the oldest bird from Thursday which is now 2 days older at 687 days.

There was also a few non Silvereyes caught -
Chaffinch - 2 (0)
Dunnock - 1 (2)
House Sparrow - 3 (0)
Starling - 1 (0)
Bellbird - 1 (4) the new bird was male and the recaps 1 female 3 male including the oldest recap for the species. Five birds in a day is the highest total for Bellbirds.

Adult Male Bellbird

Adult Female Bellbird

Wing of Adult Male Bellbird showing wingtip aging feature

Tui - 1 (0)

The wing of the new Tui showing the lack of a "notch" - aging it as a first year bird.

Queenstown - the last session here for a while

Yesterday 31 May I had a couple of nets up for the morning. Although I caught a total of 42 birds with only 5 species there wasn't much variety. There were 26 new birds and 16 recaps.

Species caught were -
Song Thrush - 1 (0) first bird caught.
House Sparrow - 7 (2) there is quite a big flock about but I think the majority have learnt to avoid the nets.
Silvereye - 14 (13) most of the recaps were recently banded, many at Mark's apple orchard which is about 2-300 m away as the bird flys.
Bellbird - 1 (1)
Tui - 3 (0) a bit of a surprise to catch 3 new Tui as I thought I had most of the locals banded.

One of the new Tui, a female

And a bigger male

While  mesuring his wing length it was found he had a hitchhicker

A Bit of This and a Bit of That

I have set the Funnel Trap a couple of times here recently with limited success. Last Wednesday I caught 18 birds; all Silvereye with 9 new and 9 recaps. I set it again yesterday and again caught 18 birds; 15 Silvereye, 10 new and 5 recaps as well as 1 new Dunnock, Greenfinch and House Sparrow. A bit like I was worried that would happen to the Blackcaps (NZ's cricket team) - both sessions were stopped by rain.

A couple of Recoveries.

Yesterday I received two recovery reports from the Banding Office. One was a Blackbird that had been banded at our Island Bay site in Jan 2014 as a juvenile and recovered dead on the other side of the valley.

The other was a colour banded Tui found dead in Northland (a Wellington suburb). It had been banded at the Karori Cemetery in July 08. It was seen feeding on sugar water in Roseneath on the other side of the City in Nov & Dec 09. Subsequently it must have moved back across the city to where it was found. The owner of the property reports that it was resident there when they moved into the property back in February.

A file photo of a colour banded Tui, but not either of the ones mentioned

An Old Tui.

Although this is not one of ours I have had an interesting report from Ralph this morning about a resighting of a colour banded Tui. This was of a bird from a study he did in Southland in the early 1990's. It had been banded 16 Dec 2004, at 3817 days from banding it is about 3 weeks longer than our oldest Tui here in Wellington which is 3797 days from banding. We have a Blackbird that was longer at 4021 days and a Silvereye that was exactly the same, 3817 days. Ralph's Tui was originally fitted with a radio transmitter which hasn't appeared to have affected it's survival at all.   

Island Bay Monday 1 Dec - over a Ton of Sparrows

Annette, Ros and I had an extremely busy time at our Island Bay site this morning. Due to heavy early rain the session was initially cancelled then the rain eased and we decided to give it a go. Although the start was over an hour later than we had hoped, and we lost netting time as showers went through, we still managed to catch 140 birds with 123 new and 17 recaps. The catch, as usual at this site, was dominated by House Sparrows and with only 4 species there wasn't much variety. The lack of variety was probably due to the fact that with putting the net up and down and spending considerable time at the net extracting birds the more cautious species stayed away.

Species caught were -
Blackbird - 3 (1)
Starling - 4 (1)
House Sparrow - 111 (13) the oldest was banded Jan 2011 and a considerable number were newly fledged Young. This is the highest total catch of Sparrows at any site we have made in one day.

Although most of the Juv. Sparrows could not be sexed this one was already showing  some male colouring.
Photo by Ros (I forgot my camera)

Tui - 5 (2) one of the recaps was banded at this site in Nov 2011 and the other was the highlight of the morning. It was banded by Ralph at Roseneath on 25 July 2009. This is the first time it has been recaptured and despite it being colour banded the last sighting was 3 Nov 2009. There were a large number of Tui about and at one stage there were at least 15 visible with another 2 in bags waiting to be processed.

Some of the Tui coming down to and at the sugar water bowls. They tend to dominate the table but are very  hard to get into the net. Photo by Ros

Houghton Bay 2 Sept - Tui

I spent a couple of hours at the Houghton Bay stream this afternoon. Didn't catch a lot of birds, just 14 of 5 species with 11 new and 3 recaps. There were 2 species that were significant; only 4 Silvereye, 3 new and 1 recap an extremely low number for this site. 6 Tui were caught which is the highest number ever caught there in one session. One of the Tui was a recap banded at Island bay almost 2 years ago, Sept 2012.

With handling so many Tui I had a bad case of "Tui" finger especially after banding 3 big males in a row.
(All the blood is mine)

Other birds were 1 House Sparrow, 2 Grey Warbler and a recap Dunnock which although not very old at 2 years from banding is still the oldest recap at this site.

The Dunnock

Karori Cemetery Saturday 26 July - a few Tui but not much else.

A group of us gathered at the Karori Cemetery on Saturday morning to see if we could catch a few birds esp. Tui. We haven't banded there before at this time of year so it was a bit of an experiment. A few were caught but not many so probably won't try again. The tally was 7, all new with 1 Chaffinch, 1 Song Thrush and 5 Tui, we caught 4 birds very soon after putting the first nets up but then there was nothing for a long period. We then caught a female Tui in one net and before we had that out 2 big males went into another. We also had a Kaka go into a net, fortunately it got out before any damage was done to either the net or fingers.

A Tui waits extraction, look at that claw ready to execute vengeance.

Another waits defiantly.

Felix & Rory hold bagged Tui while another is ready for release.

Karori Cemetery 3 May - Blackbirds & Tui

A group of us gathered at the Karori Cemetery this morning.  The first couple of hours were a bit frustrating as despite a good forecast we had periods of misty drizzle. Consequently the nets were slow in being erected but despite this we still had a reasonable catch of 14 birds.

Katherine banding a Tui with the sharp bits controlled by Dave and Otis keeping an eye on progress.

Most were Blackbirds with 9 new and a recap.  The recap was the same one we caught a couple of weeks ago and it still holds the record for the oldest bird recaptured at this site now extended by 12 days.
One new Silvereye was caught and 3 Tui. The first Tui caught was in heavy moult in all areas - the first one caught moulting this year. By the notch in P8 it was judged to be a bird in its first year.

The Tui wing showing P7 growing and P8 with a small notch

Yesterday I retrieved a dead banded Tui from the road, probably the result of being hit by a car. It had been banded in Nov 2012 as a first year so would now be aged as a 4. The bird was in pristine condition having just completed its moult so I took the opportunity to take a photo of the wing to show the development of the notch of a known aged bird.

The wing of the dead bird showing the bigger notch of an adult.

An old Tui tracked down

I received a message yesterday about a colour banded Tui that had been seen and photographed in a Karori garden. Unfortunately one of the colour bands was missing with the bands being B/R-?/M.

 

This narrowed the possibilities down to the bird being one of six banded Tui. As two had been reported dead we were down to four possibilities. Michael, who had reported the bird, was able to identify some of the digits on the metal band including the prefix which was D, so this narrowed the search down to two possibilities. He was then able to identify a sequence of 3 digits being 811 so the band had to be D-181101 not D-185201.

This was a male banded at the Karori Plunket Rooms, Karori Rd on 25 May 2003 and is now at 3797 days from banding our oldest reported Tui. A special thanks to Michael who did some great detective work to identify this bird. Some more of his great photos can be seen on -  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/digitaltrails/sets/72057594098897477

Island Bay 7 June - Tui

Monica, Ros, Annette and I had a successful morning's banding at our Island Bay site today. Bird numbers were down considerably from recent sessions but as Monica was over from Sydney it was as much a social and story telling session as it was a bird banding one. So, in regards to this it was a great success as it was interesting to catch up with her Australian activities.

We caught a total of 41 birds of 6 species with 32 new and 9 recaptures. This is a lot lower than recent sessions and was about half of the numbers caught in June last year. The big difference in numbers was due to the almost complete absence of House Sparrows. Ken our host reported that they were there in their  hundreds last week.

Species caught were -
Blackbird - 4 (3) one of the recaps was banded as an adult in Nov 07 and is now at 2042 days our oldest recaptured Blackbird at this site. It was its the first recapture so where has it been for the last 5+ years? Probably in the area but playing hard to catch.
Chaffinch - 9 (2)
Dunnock - 4 (1)

Monica banding her first Dunnock for a while.

Tui - 6 (0) the first 3 birds caught were Tui, with all but the last caught being male.

The 3 "girls" with their 3 "boys"

The last Tui caught, a female with a pinkish neck tuft, looked as if it had  some different food recently.

Two of the male Tui wings showing the notch in 7p, the older bird with the bigger notch is at the bottom

House Sparrow - 8 (3) the oldest recap was banded Dec 11
Yellowhammer - 1 (0) our first Yellowhammer at this site for a couple of years.

We had an interesting discussion on aging and sexing the Yellowhammer

As is usual we enjoyed a scrumptious morning tea, (actually 3 coffees and a  milky drink).

NZ Birds Online

A new web site was launched last weekend at the The Ornithological Society of NZ (OSNZ) AGM in Dunedin and it is a great addition to the New Zealand birding scene. It is a joint venture between OSNZ and Te Papa. Colin who works at Te Papa and is a long term and very active OSNZ member was the main driving force behind the site. He has done a fantastic job and has I believe spent most of his waking hours working on it for months. Well done Colin and your team.

http://nzbirdsonline.org.nz/

Karori Cemetery 4 May - A black day

We had a banding session at the Karori Cemetery this morning and it was all black, well actual half of them were brown. We caught 10 new birds and 1 recap (actually 3 but 2 were banded earlier in the morning so don't count) all birds were blackbirds so a bit disappointing not to get a bit more variety.

Hugh, Ros, Kate and Ross discussing the finer points of wing moult in  female Blackbirds.

These were all aged as 1 (in first year)

Brown/Fawn Tui

I saw a brown/fawn Tui (Isabelline? Leucism?)in Jeypore St, Berhampore yesterday. It is in the same banksia tree as one of a similar colour was in last winter, there are about 15 banksia trees in the area each with a Tui or two in so I suspect this bird is probably the same one as last winter.

It was a very overcast  day but I did manage to get some photos even if they are a bit dull.

An old Tui Recovery

Recieved a recovery report from the DOC Banding Office of a Tui caught by a cat in Hataitai. It was a colour banded bird that was banded at the Zoo as an adult in Aug 2004 so would have now been at least 10 years old. This is our longest Tui recovery, recapture or sighting. Surpisingly this was also the first report of it since it was banded so where has it been for the last 8 years?

Karori Cemetery - Wednesday 29 August

Ros , Derek and I spent some time this morning at the Karori Cemetery. We put up a couple of nets to see what was about and also with the hope that we would catch a colour banded Tui that has lost a band and therefore can not be positively identified. To catch a specific bird is a difficult task and one that we failed in.  Although the bird was seen near a net it didn't oblige by going in. If it is the bird I suspect it to be it would be the oldest Tui we have records of.

We did manage to catch 5 unbanded Tui as well as a Blackbird, a House Sparrow and the last bird of the day was a colour banded Kaka which we managed to get out of the net without losing any fingers. This is almost certainly a bird from Zealandia.  We also had a Bellbird bounce which would have been a good catch but not this time.

One of the Tui had several small white flecks around one eye, not sure if these were small feathers or some small beasties. Took a photo with my little camera but unfortunately the quality is not good enough to resolve the issue.

Tui with small white flecks around outside of one eye

Karori Cemetery Saturday 30 June

Gen, Nick and I spent a couple of hours at the Karori Cemetery this morning partly to see what birds were there and also for Gen to hopefully get some more samples. Although we did not catch a lot of birds it still was I believe a successful session.

Dogwood fruit a month ago now almost all consumed

 In all we caught 8 birds with 5 new Blackbirds

One of the Female Blackbirds had a very prominent growth bar across it's wings and tail giving us no trouble aging it as a 1

Three Tui were caught 1 new and 2 recaptures, they were all big males tipping the scales at near or over 200g. One of the recaps was banded at the beginning of May and has gone from 148g to a massive 210g - there must be good stuff in the Dogwood fruit. The other recap was banded 30 May 2010 at the same spot.

Gen with the biggest male Tui, she managed very well only losing a small amount of (her) blood.

Male Tui wing showing the wing slot in the 7th primary which they use to make the  whiring sound  when giving dominance displays.

Cats were again a potential problem with several prowling the area and a close eye had to be kept on the nets. When one of the Blackbirds squawked loudly when being processed several appeared almost instantly.