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.

Houghton Bay 2 May - More Grey Warblers

I was able to get down to the Houghton Bay Stream for a couple of hours this morning and although I didn't catch a lot of birds I still consider it was a successful session. Managed to catch 24 birds of 6 species with 20 new and 4 recaps. Most of the birds were little fellows when, for the first time that I can recall, I used more AA bands than any other size.

Also had a Morepork perched close to a couple of nets which I found while investigating Blackbirds giving loud alarm calls. They had obviously found it and woken it up from its daytime nap. Interestingly the nearest net did not catch any birds. The photo below was taken with my little pocket camera, the big one was at home keeping warm.

Morepork  

Species caught were -
Chaffinch - 3 (0) all were 1st year males.
Greenfinch - 2 (0)
House Sparrow - 1 (1)
Silvereye - 4 (0)
Fantail - 3 (0)
Grey Warbler - 6 (3) All the recaps were banded this year. So far this year 33 Grey Warblers have been banded at this site. For the whole of 2012 only 24 were banded, so it appears that they had a very successful breeding this last spring.

The first bird caught a little Grey Warbler recap.

Banded as a brown eyed Juv back in February it now has the red eye of an adult

While some of the Warblers have the red eye of adults some still have the browner eyes of younger birds with a couple still moulting tail feathers.

Island Bay Wed 1 May - Sparrows & Chaffinch

Kate, Mary, Otis and I had a successful banding session at Island Bay this morning. We caught a total of 78 birds of 6 species with 74 new but only 4 recaptures. This compares with a total of 61 birds in a session this time last year.

Species caught were -
Blackbird - 6 (1) the majority of the birds were 1st year males.

One of the 1st year male Blackbirds appeared to have moulted  P5 which is a bit unusual.

Dunnock - 4 (0)
Chaffinch - 15 (0) this is the most Chaffinch we have ever caught at this site in 1 day.

The wings of 2 different aged male Chaffinch

Greenfinch - 5 (0)
Fantail - 1 (0)

Mary, our chief scribe about to release the Fantail under the watchful eye of Ken,our host.

House Sparrow - 43 (3) The oldest recap was banded Feb 2011

One of the Sparrows had a streaked belly similar to a juvenile Greenfinch

As usual we had great hospitality with a superb morning feast as shown below.

Karori Cemetery Wed 24 April - Quality not Quantity

Ros and I had a banding session at the Karori Cemetery this morning and although we didn't catch a lot we did get some interesting birds. Unfortunately the day was a bit on the windy side and so this, as well the bright sun, affected a couple of the nets. In all we only caught 7 birds of 3 species with 4 new and 3 recaptures.

Blackbirds were the most numerous with 3 new and 1 recap that had been banded June 09, so a reasonably old bird.

We caught 2 Tui recaps and both had been banded about a year ago. There were a good number of Tui about and it was surprising we didn't catch some new birds. Also 3 colour banded birds were seen. One was banded June 09, 1 on June 10 and the other unfortunately has lost a band and is now W-R/M so can't be positively identified, but the most likely bird is B/W-R/M which was banded in May 04 and occupied the same territory up until this bird appeared with the missing band.

The first Tui recap was a large male with a well developed notch  on its 7th primary

The highlight of the morning was catching a male Bellbird the first we have caught for several years. We also identified a colour banded Bellbird which is almost certainly from Zealandia.

The male Bellbird, a handsome chap who now has some new bling.

The catch rate from this part of the Cemetery has dropped noticeably since most of the Dogwood trees were poisoned about 3 years ago. They now have bare branches where they were previously loaded with fruit at this time of year.

The remains of some of the poisoned Dogwood trees

Chatham Island - Black Robins

Two of our group (Annette & Nikki) have just returned from the Chatham Islands where they were helping Tansy (who did some training with us recently) with the black robin post-breeding census and banding of this year’s juveniles. Almost, (there is at least 1 that is not), all Black Robins are colour banded with individual combos that include a year colour.

Black Robin sporting it's team colours

Most of the Robins are caught in Clap Traps baited with mealworms which are irresistible to most of them, but they are also very tempting for the local Chatham Is Tomtits.

Black Robin in the "Catch Zone" Sorry the pic is on it's side , I can't seem to correct  it.

Chatham Is Tomtit with it's free meal.

Fifty Five robins were found on Mangere Island – 45 banded adults and 10 juveniles that were caught and banded.

The "Robin Bush" on Mangere Is is a very small patch of green on a big rock called an Island.

The bush area is much larger on Rangatira Island, and 195 adults and 91 juveniles were found. 100 of these were unbanded. They caught and banded 99, but despite much attention could not get number 100 which was not interested in mealworms, and she remains unbanded.

There might be a few more birds on Rangatira that managed to avoid them on this trip. As these are the only two places where Black Robins are found the total world population in April 2013 is about 341: at least 240 adults and 101 juveniles. All these are descendants of just a handful of birds including just the one female, Old Blue who saved the species from extinction. 

The oldest bird found on the trip was a female G/A-G/G that was banded in 2005, unfortunately last year's oldest bird, which was 13 years old, fledged last century and was banded by the late Don Merton was not seen this year and is presumed not to have survived.

Zoo Banding 13 April

We had a reasonably successful day's banding at the Zoo today. We had good conditions, especially this morning, calm and overcast then a little light misty drizzle early afternoon and later some rain as we packed up the final net. In all we caught 76 birds of 7 species with 61 new and 15 recaptures. A good balance of banders attended with several experienced ones ably to assist and mentor some new folk.

Some of the team (Gen, Annette, Otis & Ros) busy at the banding station.

Species caught - (Recaps in brackets)
Chaffinch - 1 (0)
Greenfinch - 6 (1) The recap was banded in July 11. The overall total was well below the usual for this time of year.
Dunnock - 2 (1)

One of the Dunnocks showed a very prominent growth bar across its tail

House Sparrow - 23 (3) The oldest recap was banded in Feb 09
Silvereye - 28 (9) We had 3 birds caught in a net at the same time that were all banded on the 27 May 2012, 2 with consecutive numbers. One of the other recaps was banded at the Mt Albert site last month.

One of the Silvereyes also had a prominent growth bar.

Grey Warbler - 0 (1) A bird banded almost exactly a year ago on 16 April 12
Tui - 1 (0)

Gen with "her" Tui, amazingly she got it out of the net on her own without  spilling any of her blood.

 Surprisingly we didn't catch any Blackbird but we had a bonus in a keeper reporting the recovery of one found dead recently. It had been banded in Nov 2005 so at 2666 days from banding, although not our oldest Blackbird still a pretty old bird. This highlights one of the benefits of banding at the Zoo with staff reporting recoveries as well as assisting in other ways, their help is much appreciated.

Houghton Bay 2 April - Another Grey Day

Although it was grey and cloudy when I was setting the nets up the sun did come out, but the real Grey was a huge number of Grey Warblers caught. In all there were 17, which is an incredible number of these little beauties. In the first hour 13 were caught and the only others birds were 3 Silvereyes and a H Sparrow. This is the most Grey Warblers I have ever caught in a day. I think the previous biggest number was 10.

In all 37 birds of 7 species were caught with 33 new and just 4 recaps.
Species caught were -
Greenfinch - 1 (0)
Goldfinch - 3 (0)
House Sparrow - 2 (0)
Silvereye - 10 (0)
Grey Warbler - 14 (3 ) all the recaps were banded in the last few months. Only 2 birds had the red eye of an adult all the rest were young birds with brownish eyes.

The 2 red eyed birds

Fantail - 2 (1)

The retained brown tipped juvenile coverts indicate this is a 1st year bird

Kingfisher - 1 (0) This is only the 2nd Kingfisher caught at this site in over 5 years. In the last 12 months the only Kingfisher was caught on the last banding session for the year, and in this period 1 has been caught on the first session.

The first Kingfisher for the year, hopefully not the last.