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.