Monday 23 June 2014

Zoo Revisited Monday 23 June

Annette and I went back to the Zoo this morning and we were joined by Emma and Shannan from the Dept of Conservation. They are working on a video about mist netting and were hoping to get some  footage of Tui catching and extraction. With this in mind we put a double net up under the large red flowered gum tree where large number of Tui are feeding.
The Gum tree which has grown considerable since we last attempted to catch Tui under it.
A net pole is visible on the right of the photo.
Although there were probably 30-40 Tui in the tree we caught none which was both surprising and disappointing. This is the site where we caught up to 10 birds in a morning several years ago, I think the difference is that the tree has grown considerable in this time and the Tui stay in the upper canopy. The 2 colour banded Tui that were there yesterday were still present (the 3rd is at the other end of the Zoo), so are now recorded as a day older.

The "Old Bird" with all bands still looking good.

In order to make use of our time we also put up a couple of other nets with some success, catching 19 birds of 4 species, (recaps in brackets)
Dunnock - 0 (1)
House Sparrow - 3 (1)
A Dunnock and female House Sparrow, often confused by many people.
Greenfinch - 0 (1)
Silvereye - 3 (10)
Today we recaptured an old Silvereye that had been banded in Jan 2008, so is of a reasonable age. This was in contrast to yesterday when no old birds were caught.


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