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Catch Report: Manly 27th October 2013

Catch Report for the 27th October 2013 at Manly Marina

 

 

Terek Sandpiper, just prior to release (c) Jon Coleman 2014

Terek Sandpiper, just prior to release (c) Jon Coleman 2014

A team of 20 people arrived at Manly on the Sunday morning to set two small mesh cannon nets at the manly Marina roost side, both nets were set on the marina side of the lagoon with the hope of an early catch of Grey-tailed tattlers (hopefully some with geolocators) and a later catch of Bar-tailed godwit.

The tattlers arrived very early and after some light twinkling we had what looked like well over a hundred tattlers and a few other species in front of the first net so took the opportunity to fire just after midday, catching all the birds in the area 142 birds in total. 101 of these were tattlers including one with a geolocator.

As part of Brisbane’s RAMSAR celebrations a number of long standing friends from the Yatsu Higata Nature Observation Centre in Japan were here on an annual exchange visit with Brisbane City Council and took the opportunity to visit us while we were banding. They have a special interest in our tattlers that extends beyond our long standing relationship, they, along with the Port of Brisbane and the Wild Bird Society of japan, Chiba, provided a significant amount of the funding for our geolocators, so they were keen to see us retrieving the one we had caught.  

On their walk in to the site they twinkled birds on the far side of the roost perfectly across the lagoon resulting in a second small, but mixed catch of small shorebirds in the second net at 1:30pm. Although there appeared to be 50-60 birds, mainly stint and sand-plover in the area we only caught 28 birds, despite the net firing well.

The totals caught are in the table below:-

SPECIES

NUMBER NEW

NUMBER RETRAP

TOTAL

Black-winged Stilt

3

1

4

Curlew Sandpiper

12

4

16

Grey-tailed tattler

83

18

101

Lesser Sand-plover

7

3

10

Red-necked Stint

13

1

14

Ruddy Turnstone

1

0

1

Sharp-tailed Sandpiper

12

0

12

Terek Sandpiper

9

3

12

 TOTAL CATCH

 

 

170

 

The geolocator was activated in 2010 and recorded two northward migration routes and the intermediate southward migration route. You can see the interim trace of the birds migration route at the following link.

Tattler Geolocator Results

Thanks to all who attended for making the day entertaining and more importantly safe for the people and birds involved in the day.