The 20014-15 year - A bit below average

I have just collated our banding stats for the banding year 2014/15 which closed on 31 March.
It was a reasonable year with a total of 3079 new birds banded and 944 recaptures. Both these figures are slightly below both the 5 and 10 year averages. For the first time Silvereye have been knocked off the top perch replaced by House Sparrow which is usually No 2 candidate.

Year Banding Totals
	10/11		11/12		12/13		13/14		14/15		5yr Av	10yr Av
H Sparrow	698	3	620	2	905	2	822	2	1056	1	820	624
Silvereye	1934	1	1341	1	1063	1	1097	1	1001	2	1287	1280
Goldfinch	39	12	43	9	140	6	75	6	206	3	101	70
Greenfinch	710	2	211	3	197	3	313	3	205	4	327	312
Blackbird	123	6	174	5	151	5	111	5	178	5	147	141
Chaffinch	161	5	195	4	175	4	140	4	152	6	165	140
Tui	67	9	57	7	71	8	46	8	71	7	62	61
Dunnock	56	10	37	10	65	9	42	9	55	8	51	46
Starling	76	8	73	6	91	7	59	7	47	9	47	32
Fantail	78	7	30	11	60	10	37	10	47	10	65	78
Grey Warbler	41	13	49	8	39	11	31	11	41	11	48	47
Song Thrush	7	14	1	15	5	13	5	13	12	12	6	6
E Rosella	0	16	1	16	2	14	2	14	3	13	2	1
Yellowhammer	162	4	20	12	27	12	6	12	2	14	43	33
Kingfisher	1	15	2	13	1	15	2	15	1	15	1	2
Magpie	0	18	0	18	0	18	0	18	1	16		0
Cal Quail									1	17		0
	4195		2855		2993		2789		3079		3182	3199

Significant movements in the table above are shown - up in Red and down in Blue. The figures beside the total for each species indicates their ranking for the year.

Species caught in order of the number of new birds were ( recap totals in brackets)

No 1 House Sparrow - 1056 (159) The usual No 2 species.  They have had a huge breeding season with a large number of juveniles caught Nov to Feb.

No 2 Silvereye - 1001 (527) The first time Silvereye hasn't been No 1 and the lowest total in 10 years. The mild winter meant that very few were caught at our usual winter sites.

No 3 Goldfinch - 206 (17) The big mover for the year, up from 6 last year and well above average with more than double both the 5 and 10 year. Large numbers of juveniles were caught over the summer at our stream sites.

No 4 Greenfinch - 205 (103) Well down on both the 5 and 10 year average. Usually ranked at No 3

No 5 Blackbird - 178 (94) Slightly up on average.

No 7 Chaffinch - 152 (17) Usually ranked at 4 although numbers were about average.

No 8 Tui - 71 (10) Our equal highest total and continues the trend of rising numbers.

No 9 Dunnock - 55 (17) About average.

No 10= Starling - 47 (33) Down on the last couple of years but still about average.

No 10= Fantail - 47 (5) Down on recent years, possibly affected by the dry year.

No 12 Grey Warbler - 41 (6) About average

No 13 Song Thrush - 12 (1) Our highest total ever.

No 14 Eastern Rosella - 3 (0) A species just starting to show on the radar.

No 15 Yellowhammer - 2 (1) This species is very variable and didn't come to town this year.

We also caught 1 each of Kingfisher, Magpie and a Californian Quail. No Redpolls were caught during the year.

Over 5 yr	10/11	11/12	12/13	13/14	14/15
Silvereye	21	16	13	23	21
Tui	5	2	6	7	15
Blackbird	8	2	6	5	8
Starling	4	2	9	4	5
House Sparrow	1	1	1	2	1
Chaffinch	0	1	2	1	1
Greenfinch	0	0	2	0	1
Yellowhammer	0	0	0	0	1
	39	24	39	42	53

There was a good increase in the number of birds caught over 5 years from banding including our first Yellowhammer.

Recoveries	10/11	11/12	12/13	13/14	14/15
Blackbird	4	6	9	9	4
Chaffinch	2	1	1	4	3
Dunnock	2	0	1	1	1
Fantail	1	0	0	1	0
Goldfinch	2	1	0	1	0
Greenfinch	9	5	1	3	1
Grey Warbler	0	0	1	2	0
House Sparrow	11	20	7	8	9
Silvereye	14	5	11	11	5
Song Thrush	0	0	0	0	0
Starling	2	2	6	2	1
Tui	6	6	2	5	4
	53	47	39	47	28

The number of birds recovered dead was down on the last few years, probably due to the mild winter.

Oldest Birds   Band No Species Days Est Age D 71970 Blackbird 4021 12 yr 0 mth A 135040 Silvereye 3817 10 yr 9 mth D 181101 Tui 3797 10 yr 8 mth D 99970 Starling 3270 10 yr 0 mth A 10435 Chaffinch 3244 9 yr 11 mth B 96619 House Sparrow 2773 8 yr 0 mth A 168383 Greenfinch 1956 5 yr 3 mth A 104139 Yellowhammer 1949 6 yr 0 mth A 167973 Dunnock 1856 4 yr 0 mth AA 4172 Grey Warbler 1519 4 yr 4 mth A 153123 Goldfinch 1428 4 yr 5 mth AX 1919 Fantail Pied 1176 3 yr 3 mth C 51678 Song Thrush 889 3 yr 2 mth

The oldest bird of each species banded by the Group and recaptured or recovered, figures in Red are new records set this year. Days column shows the number of days from banding to recapture and Est Age is an estimate of the minimum age of the bird.

Centennial Park, Miramar Sat 28 March - A new site

Joakim, Henk and I went to a small stream in Centennial Park in Miramar this morning. This is the place where the remains of 25+ birds have been found in the last few months, most if not all, were the victims of a domestic cat. Among them were at least 21 Tui as well as Blackbird, Song Thrush and Kingfisher.  All these are larger birds so it's anybodies guess as to how many smaller birds have been munched.
Joakim is the spokesperson for the restoration project for the park. www.temotukairangi.co.nz

Henk with the first birds caught.

Joakim photographing Henk with the first bird banded.

The site has very good potential but we have left it a bit late in the summer to really get a big catch. Nineteen birds were caught and all, not surprisingly, were new. 1 Fantail, 3 Grey Warbler and 15 Silvereye.

Almost half the Silvereye were caught together. The foliage in the background gives an idea of how a cat can ambush bathing birds. This little stream is probably the only available water in the area in a dry summer.

Houghton Bay 25 March - pretty quiet

Ros, Andrea (scribe) George and I spent a pretty quiet couple of hours at the Houghton Bay stream this afternoon. After a little rain overnight I hadn't expected a lot of birds and this proved to be the case. We caught 16 birds of 3 species, 14 new and a couple of recaps.
13 new Silvereye and 1 recap.

One of the Silvereyes had a nasty looking cyst on its wing but it still appeared to be doing OK. Just about finished its moult and weighed in at 12.6g which is about average.

1 new Tui.
1 recap Fantail, the first recaptured there this year.

George (holding the Fantail) with three of the school kids that joined us for a period . Pity we didn't have more birds to show them.

Zoo Saturday 21 March

We had a reasonably successful session at the Zoo on Saturday. The conditions were good in the morning but bright sun and a strong northerly affected most of the nets later in the day. A small turn out of banders meant that we erected only 5 nets instead of the usual 8-10 and we were slower to get them up. However we still managed to catch  63 birds of 7 species with 53 new and 10 recaps. Most of the recaps had been banded in the last few months.

The team at work - George, Andrea (our scribe for the day) and Kat. We also had Sarah, Kyle and little Finn for a while but they couldn't stay long as Finn needed his nap.

Species caught were - (recaps in brackets)
Blackbird - 1 (0)
Dunnock - 3 (1)
House Sparrow - 32 (5)

Almost all the Sparrows were still in moult. This one was doing it in a strange order

Goldfinch - 6 (1)
Greenfinch - 2 (0)
Chaffinch - 2 (2)
Silvereye - 7 (1) the recap was the oldest bird of the day banded May 2012

 

Houghton Bay Tuesday 10 March - More Silvereyes.

Ros, George and I had another reasonably busy day at the Houghton Bay stream this afternoon. We caught 79 birds of 5 species. As was the case last week the catch was dominated by new Silvereyes with 60 but we did manage to make 3 recaptures, all recently banded Silvereyes. Other species caught were - 8 Greenfinch, 3 Chaffinch, 4 House Sparrows and a solitary Fantail (the first bird caught).

George and Ros busy at the banding table

With the high percentage of new Silvereyes being caught I wonder if there is just a big population in the area or if there is a turnover of birds. I have had reports of large flocks of Silvereye and other small passerines in parts of the east coast of the South Island. With the current drought conditions in that area I wonder if birds are moving north? Unfortunately there is very little banding going on in that area so we are unlikely to find out.

Houghton Bay Wednesday 4 March

Andrea, George, Mary and I had a busy 3 hours or so at the Houghton Bay stream this morning. We caught 80 birds of 7 species all of which were new. It is a bit surprising and perhaps disappointing that none of the 5000+ birds banded at this site in the last few years were recaptured today. This was at least partly due to the fact the the majority of birds caught were young ones.

We caught 7 Greenfinch, 5 Chaffinch, 1 Dunnock, 2 House Sparrows, 56 Silvereye, 1 Tui and 8 Grey Warbler.

Although the majority of all species were juveniles the Grey Warbler on the right has the reddish eye of an older bird.

Zoo Stream Tuesday 3 March

I have been in Auckland for the last week so, no banding. Managed a couple of hours at the stream over the fence from the Zoo this afternoon. Caught 23 birds of 7 species with 17 new and 6 recaps.
Birds caught were -
Blackbird - 2 (0)
Dunnock - 0 (1)

The Dunnock while not moulting its primaries was moulting its secondaries

Chaffinch - 4 (4) The oldest was banded in March 2013, another was banded in Houghton Bay and another at our Island Bay site.

All the Chaffinch recaps were males, this one was the oldest

A couple of the Chaffinch and most of the Silvereyes were about halfway through their moult.

Greenfinch - 1 (1)
Silvereye - 7 (0)
Grey Warbler - 2 (0)
Fantail - 1 (0) A feature of the afternoon was the number of Fantail that I didn't catch, there were 5-6 birds flitting about most of the time.