Tuesday 19 July 2016

Queenstown - The last birds for a while

We are now back in Christchurch for a couple of weeks before going to Auckland to look after a couple of teenagers while their parents (our son and d-in law)are in Rio for the games - watching not competing. This means I am unlikely to get back to Queenstown to do any banding for some time.

Didn't do much banding in the last week there, partly due to inclement weather but also due to an apparent lack of birds. There were very few Song Thrush, Blackbird or Silvereye about, these species are probably still feeding on the abundant crop of berries and fruit that are still about.

During this last week or so I caught 25 birds off 7 species with 13 new and 12 recaptures.
Blackbird - 0 (1)
Song Thrush - 0 (1) one of the first Thrushes banded and currently the oldest recap.
House Sparrow - 8 (0)
Dunnock - 0 (2)
Chaffinch - 1 (0)
Bellbird - 0 (6) The last 13 Bellbird caught have been recaps with the last new bird caught back on 21 June. Perhaps I have banded them all - but I doubt is. Recaptured the first one banded there.
Tui - 4 (2) As with Bellbird recaptured the first Tui banded at the site.

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