PennineBirder
Well-known member
I'm not trying to be deliberately provocative here as I know there are many dedicated bird ringers all over the globe who put a lot of effort into this but, is it really a modern scientific process any longer?. How many new discoveries are being made as a result of bird ringing these days?. I can see satellite tagging of birds being used to open up new lines of discovery and research and am all for that.
Ringing/banding though seems to me a thing of the past, like birds egg collecting, useful once but old hat now. Are modern ringers collecting totals/species/lists - a bit like twitchers, to impress their mates?
Birds caught in mist nets are surely distressed by the experience, however briefly, and carrying a metal ring on their leg for the rest of their life cannot have any benefit to the bird. What benefit do we get?. How many recoveries as a percentage of the number ringed do we see?. What do we learn that we don't already know?.
I'd like to know.
Peter
Ringing/banding though seems to me a thing of the past, like birds egg collecting, useful once but old hat now. Are modern ringers collecting totals/species/lists - a bit like twitchers, to impress their mates?
Birds caught in mist nets are surely distressed by the experience, however briefly, and carrying a metal ring on their leg for the rest of their life cannot have any benefit to the bird. What benefit do we get?. How many recoveries as a percentage of the number ringed do we see?. What do we learn that we don't already know?.
I'd like to know.
Peter