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The Tay Ringing Group is a registered charity that provides the study and ringing of wild birds in Tayside and Fife. Established in the mid sixties, the Tay Ringing Group has been actively involved in many local and national projects, which include tracing the movements of our summer bird migrants and locating the breeding grounds of winter visiting wading birds.

Members have surveyed the breeding success of local birds of prey and have co-ordinated the protection of Osprey nests from persecution and egg theft, some members have long term studies at Constant Effort Sites (CES) and other nationally recognised conservation projects. Nest boxes have been erected at many of these sites where the breeding success is recorded and results sent to the BTO's Nest Record Scheme.

Members carry out these local research projects in their own time and pay for their own expenses and equipment. Some of these costs are offset by grants from conservation friendly organisations or through the sale of wild bird food and feeders, details of which are enclosed Bird ringing members of Tay Ringing Group are all volunteers who have undergone training to national standards in order to be licensed to ring birds by the British Trust for Ornithology.

A committee consisting of a chairperson, general secretary, treasurer and four general committee members manages the Tay Ringing Group. There is also a designated newsletter editor, ringing schedule secretary, ringer in charge and web site editor who may not necessarily sit as a group committee member but report to the committee on a regular basis. 

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Our Activities

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Individual members undertake their own projects but we have a strong tradition of working on group projects that have run for years or even decades. We have made contributions to the BTO schemes on population monitoring including RAS (we currently run projects on Starlings and Bearded Tit) and CES (We have run 5 CES sites and one of these is still active). Our general ringing feeds information into the national scheme and many of our members also contribute to the BTO Nest Record Scheme. We have over 100 members and ring about 20,000 birds a year. (We have ringed over half a million birds since we were founded). Our activities include mist netting, monitoring of raptors, wader roost netting, cannon netting and ringing of bird colonies such as terns, gulls and eider. We often partner with other research and conservation agencies, including universities, and our studies have been published in many, prestigious ornithological journals.