Have you made an early morning visit to our viewing screen recently? If you have then you may well have come across staff and volunteers bird ringing. The concept of ringing is over 100 years old and has been in operation in the UK since 1909, when the first two schemes were started by Aberdeen University and British Birds (the well known ornithological journal, which began life in 1907). Since then, ringing has grown tremendously and now, under the expert coordination of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), there are around 2500 volunteer ringers in the UK.
Ringing involves fitting a unique numbered metal to the leg of a bird, with specific sizes available depending on the leg size of each species. The number of each bird is logged, as well as it’s species, age and sex, wing length and weight, before the bird is released unharmed. Each ringer is rigorously trained and highly skilled and is licensed to ring by Natural England under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981.
Originally the aim of ringing was to help us understand where migratory birds went in the winter, however now the aims are much wider and indeed ringing can provide for us information that simply could not be gained any other way. This includes details such as longevity, lifecycles, survival, mortality rates and causes, migratory routes and phenology. Valuable information such as this is then used to influence the conservation of bird species and the habitats they depend on – not just in the UK, but abroad too.
Here at Langford, we have been operating our ringing scheme since December 2012 and aim to investigate survival rates of our tree sparrow population breeding in nestboxes on Phase 1. Tree sparrows suffered a c.95% decline between the 1970’s – 1990’s, a catastrophic loss. In recent years they have begun a comeback in some areas, but are still scarce or even absent from large parts of their former range in England. They also happen to be my favourite bird!
Four years ago there were no tree sparrows at Langford, but after winter feeding and the provision of nestboxes, they have colonised and bred for the first time in 2010, followed by 9 pairs in 2012, rearing 20 young. Each nestling was ringed as a chick and it is the survival of these chicks that we are looking at, along with the retention of adult breeding birds and recruitment of new adult birds to our population. This work should provide an insight into the effectiveness of our conservation methods for tree sparrows and help us to improve what we are doing for them.
So far we have ringed two tree sparrows on Phase 1, but it is still early days and we hope to see more as the months go on. The good news is that the birds are starting to build in our nestboxes too, so fingers crossed for another successful breeding season! Keep an eye on our blog over the coming months for updates on our tree sparrow ringing scheme….
Many thanks go to volunteers John and Keith for their assistance with our tree sparrow ringing.
For more information about bird ringing, please visit www.bto.org and go to the ringing pages, or phone the office on 01636 893611 and speak to Michael or Jenny.