On Monday 25 March my twin brothers and I set traps to catch Harriers. Well actually one set the traps while we other two took a leisurely drive out to the Country. The first round of the traps was a little disappointing with a new bird and a Recap. After a coffee break thing picked up and we ended the day with 10 new birds banded and 4 recaptures. One of the recaps was only banded in the morning and then caught again in the afternoon in the same trap. Must be a bit of a slow learner. The twins with one of the birds.  The other three were a bit more interesting. One had be ..read more

 There has been a limited amount of banding in recent weeks with birds mostly feeding on the large amount of food available and not yet flocking to any extent. Harriers have only returned to this part of the country in any number in the last few weeks. On Friday we had a session at the Halswell Quarry at what is usually a reliable site but only managed to band 7 birds. Three each of Dunnock and Chaffinch, and a solitary Silvereye. All were new and most were young birds. Flight a relatively new bander looking happy with the first bird of the day. Looking even happier with t ..read more

 We haven't had any major banding sessions so far this year but have nevertheless banded a few birds. About 10 days ago Ruud and I banded 3 Kingfisher puli in a nest at Living Springs near Governers Bay. This is at least a month later than we have banded nestling Kingfishers before. Last Thursday Ruud and I went to the South Island Wildlife Hospital at Willowbank to band some rehabilitated birds before their release.  We banded 7 Little Owls and 4 Kingfishers. Most of the birds of both species seemed to have received their injuries from either having an accident on a road or flying i ..read more

 We have had no organised sessions for a while, mostly due to the sites we use at this time of year having very few birds. So mostly news about Little Owls and the banding of the usual Kingfisher Puli. We were asked about six months ago if we could erect a couple of Owl nesting boxes at a site development where there were going to be several mature trees removed. The locals were concerned about the welfare of the resident Little Owls. Two boxes were duly erected then, when I went to check them about a month ago, it was found that one had been stolen. This theft must have taken some doing ..read more

 Over the last few days we have banded seven Little Owlets in two of our specially designed nesting boxes. This is our highest number banded in a year. The first 3 to be banded were in a box on the outskirts of Rangiora. This box was erected about 18 months ago and appeared to have been used last spring but unfortunately access problems prevented us from checking it out properly. We were more successful this year. On Monday we were able to gain access and got a bit of a surprise as the three chicks were of a bandable size. I had expected them to be much smaller with their mother still in ..read more

 We haven't had any sessions for a couple of weeks but there have been a number of young birds receive their bling. Starling, - we have banded 17 puli, all were in nest boxes. Phil banded 10 in his boxes at his place in Motukarara  and I have banded 7. 3 in a neighbour's box and 4 in one of my boxes. We are likely to band some more when we recheck the Little Owl boxes, as many have been taken over by Starlings. One of the newly banded Starlings. Song Thrush - 9 banded, 5 in a nest at the Quarry. The nest was found during our last session, but the chicks were too small to ba ..read more

 We had a banding session near the middle car park of the Quarry yesterday. With very comfortable conditions, perhaps a bit much bright sun but I didn't hear anyone complaining about that. With several of the nets in the shade the lack of wind was a big advantage. With Della, Vanessa, Ruud and Chris we had a small but very experienced team of banders and Jan was our chief helper out. It wasn't a big catch with 23 birds processed, 16 being new and 7 recaptures. The recapture rate was, I think, very good and included a couple of reasonable old birds. Species caught were - (recaps in bracket ..read more

 There hasn't been much banding lately. We went to the Queenstown area for a few days a couple of weeks ago and it was an eventful trip. Gale force winds then an earthquake followed by a very large fire. When we got to Queenstown the weather had turned and it was teeming down. The following day we had almost continuous thunder and lightning. On the Friday we were woken by our phones sounding an alarm to let us know that a state of emergency had been declared in Queenstown due to slips and flooding. That night it snowed, and we had a trip back with everything except the road covered with t ..read more

 We had a session at the Quarry this morning, catching only a handful of birds. The total was 9, with 6 new birds and 3 recaptures. The species were (recaps in brackets) Silvereye 2, Chaffinch 1, House Sparrow 2 (1) Greenfinch 1 (1) and Blackbird (1)  The total included a couple of interesting recaps. The most significant was a House Sparrow that had been banded 15 Feb 2018. This bird is now at 2030 days from banding our oldest recap of any species at the Quarry. The original banding date was only a couple of months after we started banding at this site. The bird has now been capture ..read more

 On Friday we had a session at Jan's place on Kennedys Bush Rd next to the Halswell Quarry. With only four of us and a huge number of birds we were kept very busy. In total we processed 122 birds with by far the most being Silvereyes with 111 new and 11 recaptures.  The only others banded were 7 House Sparrows and 3 Greenfinch, all new. The low numbers of non-Silvereyes was probably that with someone at the nets almost constantly extracting Silvereyes the more wary species stayed away. With just 10m of net up, 1x6m, 1x4m, there wasn't much room for birds to squeeze in. The team consi ..read more