UK Central Bird Ringing Data Base (1 Viewer)

[Gander]

I put in a lot of time and effort to record the coded colour rings of any ringed bird on my patch, or any that I come across when birding further afield. I also record the rings of GBBGs when I am working offshore. Typically, when I find a UK colour ringed bird, I track down the ringer using the CR-birding website, that, again typically, will give me an email address for abirder@yahoo/gmail/googlemail.com. I then send them my report with photo, and ask for any historical data.

Sadly, there is no typical for what happens next. Sometimes I get a quick response. Great! Sometimes I get a delayed response. Absolutely fine! People are busy - No problem. Sometimes though, a significant portion do not answer at all. Not acceptable!

Case in point. This year I found a colour ringed Sandwich Tern. One of quite a few. I have had responses from all the ringers, except this one. I sent a reminder after a few weeks, and copied in the e-mail address to the regional ringing group under which this particular ringer was operating. I received a response from the ringing group saying that the ringer had been away, but was now catching up with e-mails. They copied their response to him. Weeks later. Nothing! I send another polite reminder to both ringer and group, but now over a week later, I have received no response from either. To make matters worse, over a week ago, I found a colour ringed GBBG. I tracked the ringer down, but noted that the ringing scheme was from the same region as the Sandwich Tern. Again, no response. Full disclosure - I also had a ringed GBBG some years ago from the same region, and it took months to get anything out of them, again dealing with both the ringer and the group's admin. This really grinds my gears!!!

I am tempted to name and shame, but don't see any good coming out of it. I will in future however, let them know I have details of any new bird seen, and will send them details once they clear their backlog with me.

When I find ringed GBBGs offshore, their origins have always been Norway/Denmark. I log on to the Ringmerking site, enter the report details and lo and behold, I get the historical data straight away from their central database, often including many sightings of the birds in the UK (Usually Scottish North Sea fishing villages/towns).

So, my question is, why can't the UK have a central database that removes the need to be chasing individual ringers, who may or may not respond. For all I know when I send off my report to personal e-mails, that ringer may have given up on the project and taken up knitting, may be trapped in a mist net somewhere, or be lying dead in a ditch.

As the BTO are responsible for licensing bird ringers, surely they should be looking at introducing a central database for the UK, that will do away with the chaotic system presently in place? Apart from keeping me happy, a central database would provide so many advantages in providing data for conservation and bird monitoring, it would more than make up for any expense in running the system. It certainly works in Norway, so why not the UK?

Regards,
FFF (Fizzing From Fife)

 

[DMW]

It's one of my bugbears too, and it's not just the UK. There should be a Europe-wide license condition that data of all colour-ringed birds must be entered into a single easily-searchable database, with a simple reporting function. I've sometimes spent hours just trying to work out which scheme a bird belongs to (Oycs for example).

I observed a colour-ringed Slavonian Grebe a couple of years ago and to this day couldn't find details of any ringing scheme which ringed this species apart from one in Iceland, and got a useless response from them.

 

[KenM]

Unsure how these “independent” ringing groups work and or how they’re funded, lottery money?
I too, once pursued a “particular” gull group with Med Gull ring data, (sent perfect images) and initially got fairly quick e-mail responses.

However this became a short lived affair after several exchanges, to which their responses dried up and thus so did my interest!

By contrast, during the Winter of 2014, I was fortunate to host a large flock of Redpolls (c30) outside my bedroom window, managing to decipher the digits on at least 6 of them and sending them off to the BTO.

The response was first class, giving me the control data on all individual rings submitted if memory serves, returns from Yorks.,Suffolk, Kent, Hants, Clwyd at least.

Cheers

 

[citrinella]

Hi Gander,

As a ringer I would agree this isn't good enough. What can be done ? All I can suggest is you contact the BTO and raise hell with them.

I suspect this comes about because the colour rings are officially operated outwith BTO. Note that KenM has been reporting metal rings, which are BTO rings so they administer them and that system is first class. It is so good I, as Lothian Ringing Group secretary, have been bombarded with more than one batch of reports a day and some of the birds have even been caught only the day before. I guess the ones that were not caught the day before were only just reported to the BTO by the ringer.

Colour rings are more problematic. If the bird has been ringed by a ringer operating under a UK license the BTO should have been sent the colour ring details. Why should BTO not be first port of call ? I guess it comes down to money - BTO are getting squeezed. If Scandinavian schemes are reporting efficiently, that is just fortunate, not all international schemes have those resources. Indeed resources seem to change over time. There was a time when we suddenly started receiving reports from the Stavanger ringing scheme of brambling we had ringed. They started quite recently (to that time), and each report we received was older eventually going back (IIRC) about five years. It looked like they had been starved of resources for some time but had received new support.

There is one other way to help sort this - donate to the BTO ringing unit

Mike.