Bird ringing for conservation research

Bird ringing is conservation field research work, which places individually marked rings onto the legs of wild birds, to form the basis of a data collection process of that bird throughout its life. This enables scientific research to be undertaken using the data collected to enhance the conservation of bird populations and their habitats.

The bird-ringing scheme in Great Britain is co-ordinated by The British Trust for Ornithology. (BTO) which has a network of over 2,000 highly trained and licensed volunteers that currently ring over 850,000 birds every year. On average only one in every fifty birds ringed are subsequently found and reported, so every report of a ringed bird is of value.

The scheme aims to contribute to our understanding of bird population changes by monitoring the survival rates, breeding productivity and dispersal of a wide range of bird species. Much of this is based on the BTO's long term monitoring scheme but other research projects investigate the conservation and other applied topics relating to birds. Identifying patterns of dispersal and movement is crucial to understanding how bird numbers are regulated and to the knowledge of bird movements, through the analysis of existing ring recoveries and new data collection.

The scheme also contributes to other aspects of avian science, particularly through studies of behaviour, breeding, feather moult, condition and taxonomy.