Island Bay 8 June - Only a few birds

A group of us attempted to catch birds this morning at our Island Bay site with very limited success.

The team waiting for some action which didn't really arrive.
Andrea (scribe) Ros, George & Sarah.

For a variety of reasons we hadn't been there for several months and I had expected a reasonable catch. But we only managed 17 birds of 3 species with 15 new and 2 recaps. Almost certainly the main cause of the poor result was a very late start with the majority of birds having fed and departed. The other possible factor was that a strong northerly wind developed affecting the nets and the birds flight path.
We caught 1 Blackbird.

The Blackbird, a first year male, had strong markings across its flight feathers

5 Dunnocks and a recap.

The Dunnock on the left was the recap a known age bird, a 2, the right one was aged as a 1

9 House Sparrows and 1 recap.

The only real highlight of the morning was the sighting of a colour banded Tui. It had been banded on 4 June 2007 so at 2926 days from banding is a reasonably old bird.