Ringing at Intaka Island

I have not had the opportunity to ring much this year so far.  Mainly due to the fact that our summers are so windy, it is impossible to put up nets.  However, it is now winter and although it can be chilly, the wind doesn't blow as much, especially on lovely sunny days.  

I have attended two ringing sessions this month at Intaka Island near to Century City with my friend Sally Hofmeyr.  She lives closer than I do and has been ringing there for some time now.  She gets there early with some of the other volunteers and puts the nets up so by the time I get there, there are a whole string of birds in bags waiting to be ringed and I jump right in.  Sally trains some aspiring ringers and there are always plenty of volunteers to help get birds out of the nets.

Intaka is a wonderful birding spot and has many different species of water and other associated wetland birds. It is a prime spot for weavers (Southern Masked and Cape), and many have been ringed there over the years.   

The first session I ringed 18 birds including 5 retraps.  It is the most interesting part of ringing for me, other than the pure joy of holding the bird in your hand.  I love looking up the ringing records to find out when the bird was originally ringed and where.  Most of these birds are quite sedentary and don't move around too much but occasionally we do find ones that have come from other areas.  That session I processed a Southern Masked-weaver (BH78519) that was originally ringed in Milnerton a year ago.  Although Milnerton is not that far away, it is still interesting to find it at Intaka now.

The second session I ringed 21 birds with 4 retraps.  One of them was a Southern Red Bishop (BC16031) with a stainless steel ring that looked brand new.  I thought it might have been ringed earlier that day and gone into the nets again.  I was very surprised to find that it was actually ringed 8 years ago!  A nice record for a retrap and good to see how well the rings last.  We use many aluminium rings too which look old after a week.

At the end of the session I ringed a Cape Wagtail and Colin Jackson, an experienced ornithologist from the A Roche Project in Kenya was there to help me age the bird by the extend of white tips on the greater covets.  

The greater covets are the smallish feathers above the longer flight feathers.  On this bird they have a small white tip which at first made us think it was a juvenile as the adults have bigger white tips.  However, we changed our mind when studying them closer to see that the white tips edges were quite well defined whereas the juveniles are more smudged and less defined.  This birds tips are just quite worn.  An interesting lesson, thanks Colin.

I will be ringing at Intaka again on Saturday morning with Colin at his organisations "citizen science" day.  Looking forward to it.