Blogs

There some interesting information about the history of ringing birds here on the BTO website.

Without doubt, the albatross are one of the groups of seabirds that need our greatest conservation effort. Commercial fisheries, through incidental capture, have generated a huge impact in many populations and almost all the species are currently in danger of extinction. As they spend the main part of...

Hi everybody! I’m writing to share some news from my last trip in southern Brazil. I left port Rio Grande on board the FV Maria , a wooden longline vessel under the command of captain Beto, a new collaborator with Projeto Albatroz and the ATF in Brazil. Beto guided us out toward deeper waters...

To answer another part of Doggie's question, it's not necessarily the case that all the chicks in a brood would be ringed. You need to wait until the chicks' legs are big enough before ringing them. If some were too small when you visited the nest, you'd leave those. You can find out...

Before you can ring a barn owl chick you must first catch it and the roof space of the Havergate tractor shed is not the most accessible of nest sites!!

gull chick ringing

The tawny owls at Aberfoyle weren't the only ones to be ringed this week, with our Manchester peregrines getting their turn on Wednesday. If you weren't lucky enough to catch it on the nestcam, then there's some photos below courtesy of Adrian Dancy.

Hi KatTai They're lovely birds, aren't they? I'll always remember standing on a beach in Norfolk with them feeding around my feet. I took some photos but mostly they were too close! With my bird-nerdy ringing hat on (again), did you spot that the one in the bottom photo has some colour...

I find this photo a little disturbing - taken at Slimbridge on Saturday. All Swans have a natural curve in their necks, and this ring would prevent natural movement of the muscles in the neck area. It must be hard for the bird to have a preen. Bewick Swans, and one bird with a ring on its...

Hello Sorry to wade in with my bird nerd hat on... :o) I'm a trainee bird ringer . Here is a young male sparrowhawk which we caught near Peterborough at the end of October. (my photos; that's my trainer, Del, holding the bird) One of the rules when ringing is that you have to...

Though winter is a tough time for birds, it's perhaps the most rewarding season for us to feed them . You're virtually guaranteed to have a decent number of hungry visitors to your garden, even if all you do is chuck a bit of seed outside. But have you ever pondered where the birds are from?...

Received some news over the past weeks about a few more colour ringed gull sightings. Most recent was the information for a Herring Gull which was seen on the 27th September. It was originally ringed at Pitsea Landfill Site in Essex on 6th March 2010. It was the first sighting of this bird since it...

Over the next few months we’ll hopefully come across quite a few colour ringed gulls. Most of these will be Mediterranean Gulls from all over Europe. One of the first to arrive back this autumn was R13U who appeared at Radipole on the 11 th October last year. This year it re-appeared on the 3 rd...

Our cat brought in a dead blue tit with a ring today. Is the info on this ring useful to anyone? I've could't read it easily as it was so small so, but I could have another look if I knew what I was looking for, or knew how to remove it. Bird's currently in the wheelie bin, but still accessible...

There's never a Jedi Knight when you need one..... I'll have a go though. (I'm not a ringer by the way). No matter how expert the ringer, ringing is undoubtably a stressful experience for a bird, but they get over it. If they didn't, ringing would be a totally pointless (and harmful...

The BTO have a section on their website for reporting recovered rings, have a look here .

Good plan - there's a space for extra notes in the form and you could mention you're not quite sure which it is.

No, not the ringing of phones, but the ringing of chicks. Four peregrine chicks, to be precise. This week, licensed ringer Phil Belman had the job of getting and ringing the four peregrine chicks that we've been watching on one of our many webcams . The whole process took less than an hour...

The Manchester peregrine chicks were ringed yesterday, and BBC Manchester was there to catch all the action as an expert from the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO) abseiled from the top of the CIS tower to ring, and collect DNA samples, from the two chicks. Watch the BBC video , and find out why...

undisclosed location, Buzzard Chicks 2009

Undisclosed location, Juvenile Buzzards Ringed 2009

So, on to plan C. Peter Ryan, head of the Fitzpatrick Institute, tells me there's a trip going out tomorrow to Dassan Island to ring great white pelican chicks, would I like to go? Daft question! Another pre-dawn start and an 80 km drive up the west coast to Azerfontein where we board a very fast...