Cooling off

The weather has really started to cool down here at Herdsman Lake and, unusually for this time of year, so has the number of birds. The first two banding sessions of April saw 22 and 44 birds caught, and only eight birds were caught on the 23rd of April. This low number was due mostly to less nets being put up because most researchers with the group were off banding at a couple of our regional projects.

The highlights of these sessions included three Little Grassbirds, which we were very lucky to catch in the reed bed, as it won't be long before we can't access that site anymore when it fills with water coming in to winter.

A new Little Grassbird banded in April     Photo: Nick Hart

A new and retrapped Little Grassbird side-by-side. Only subtle differences in plumage were visible, with interesting differences in throat striations to be studied further.
Photo: Nick Hart

Another treat at this time of year is the flocks of Weebills passing through, and we managed to band two. These guys are Australia's smallest bird, weighing in at around 5 - 6.5 g, and banding studies have shown that despite their size they can travel large distances. There has been one record in the eastern states of a Weebill traveling 184 km. Banding studies have also shown that they can live for over 7 years.

The Weebill - Australia's smallest bird    Photo: Nick Hart

Other than that we're excited about the number of Silvereyes we've been retrapping at the lake - this has been very interesting for our study into how Silvereye morphology changes with age.

Banding summary

9th April 2016 - Species, new, (retrap)

Brown Honeyeater 1 (1)

Red Wattlebird 3 (1)

Sacred Kingfisher (1)

Silvereye 4 (3)

Striated Pardalote 4

Weebill 1

Western Gerygone 1

Willie Wagtail 1 (1)

Total 16 + (6) = 22

16th April 2016

Australian Reed-warbler 1

Little Grassbird 2 (1)

Pacific Black Duck 1               

Red Wattlebird 1

Rufous Whistler (2)

Silvereye 24 (6)

Striated Pardalote 2

Weebill (1)

Western Gerygone 2

Yellow-rumped Thornbill 1

 Total 34 + (10) = 44

23rd April 2016

Brown Honeyeater 1

Silvereye 4 (3)

Total 5 + (3) = 8

Lizzy Joyce

Autumn Movements

We have had poor weather conditions for the last couple of weekends, including being completely rained off last week.

But on April 2nd we had excellent banding conditions and the birds did not disappoint. The large movements of Silvereyes typical of this time of year have started, and these made up the majority of our catch (100 birds, 74 of which were Silvereyes). We controlled one Silvereye from nearby Bold Park, the same bird we controlled in January.
This session also marked a significant milestone where we surpassed a total of 7000 Silvereyes banded over the course of the Herdsman Lake Project.

An unusually bright-yellow Silvereye (right) compared to a 'normal' coloured Silvereye (left)

No waterbirds this week, however we still banded a couple of larger birds in the form of an Australian Raven and an Australian Hobby.

Australian Raven. Note the brown eye in this young bird. Adults have a white iris.

Australian Hobby

The highlight of the day was a most unexpected Western Spinebill, only the sixth ever banded at Herdsman Lake. It was a young bird and probably just passing through, as we tend to see in species like White-cheeked Honeyeater at Herdsman.

First-year Western Spinebill

Species - new (retrap) [control]
Australian Hobby - 1
Australian Raven - 1
Australian Reed-warbler - (2)
Brown Honeyeater - 6 (2)
New Holland Honeyeater - 1
Red Wattlebird - 2
Rufous Whistler - 1
Silvereye - 68 (5) [1]
Singing Honeyeater - 1 (1)
Striated Pardalote - 1 (1)
Western Gerygone - 3
Western Spinebill - 1
Willie Wagtail - 1 (1)
Total - 87 (12) [1] = 100