Description of the European Union for Bird Ringing

EURING is an abbreviation of The European Union for Bird Ringing. Because birds freely cross political boundaries, international cooperation is essential if they are to be studied. EURING is the organization which ensures this cooperation for all aspects of scientific bird ringing within Europe. EURING was founded in 1963, with the stated aim of organizing and standardizing European scientific bird ringing.

All European ringing schemes which supply numbered rings for the study of free-living birds are members of EURING (List of European ringing centres, see below). The EURING Board, consisting of president, vice-president, general secretary and up to 5 ordinary members, is elected by the member ringing schemes to ensure the efficient coordination of scientific bird ringing within Europe and to encourage standardization and collaboration between member schemes.

In 1966 EURING devised a standard coding system for ringing recovery data to encourage the exchange of information between different national ringing centres. This code is now used by all national ringing centres and allows the easy transfer and analysis of data from many different sources.

Another important achievement of EURING has been the creation of the EURING Data Bank. This allows most European ringing recoveries to be stored at a single location and in a standard format. The EURING Data Bank was founded in 1977 and is based at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology, which kindly provides computer facilities and the EURING Data Bank manager. (Address, see below).

The recovery data of the EURING Data Bank are at the disposal of researchers from any part of the world as long as the national ringing centre agrees. This large data bank is used to investigate various aspects of ornithology, including migration strategies, survival rates and problems for birds caused by human activities.

The EURING Data Bank also stores the annual totals of each species ringed by the individual ringing schemes. National ringing centres produce annual reports, which are freely distributed to the other member schemes. For annual ringing reports of the Copenhagen Bird Ringing Centre: [Klik].

In order to investigate problems of particular relevance to bird conservation, EURING also organizes large-scale research projects which may involve hundreds of ringers in different European countries.

EURING is dedicated to the promotion of the highest possible standards of both bird ringing and data analysis. The analysis of ringing recovery data is complex and a wide range of sophisticated statistical methods are now available. In order to promote collaboration between statisticians and ornithologists, EURING has organized a series of technical conferences at which the problems of analysis and interpretation of ringing recovery data can be resolved. These meetings are attended by specialists from all over the world and have focused upon the use of ring recoveries to calculate survival rates and dispersal rates of birds in order to understand changes in the populations of birds.

Proceedings of the EURING technical conferences:

• North, Ph.M. (ed.) 1987: Ringing recovery analytical methods. ó Acta Orn. 23: 1-175.
• North, Ph.M. (ed.) 1990: The statistical investigation of avian population dynamics using data from ringing recoveries and live recaptures of marked birds. ó The Ring 13: 1-314.
• Lebreton, J.-D. & North, Ph.M. (eds) 1993: Marked Individuals in the Study of Bird Population. Birkhäuser, Basel. 397 pp.

Achievements of EURING:

• Decides the general policy for national ringing centres
• Provides technical guidelines and standardizations for ringing
• Provides guidelines for data collection and computerisation
• Devised a standard code for the computerisation of ring recovery data
• Established the EURING Data Bank
• Coordinates European-wide research projects
• Promotes the development and use of appropriate statistical methods for the analysis of recovery data

• Total number of recoveries: 1,225,000
• Total number of bird species with recoveries: 426
• Species with more than 10,000 recoveries: 19
• Species with 1,000-10,000 recoveries: 102
• Species with 100-1,000 recoveries: 114
• Species with 10-100 recoveries: 83
• Number of ringing schemes sending recoveries: 19
• Number of ringing schemes producing reports: 36
• Average number of requests for data each year: 75

EURING databank
Ringing Unit
British Trust for Ornithology
The Nunnery
Thetford, Norfolk, IP24 2PU, UK

 E-mail: jacquie.clark@bto.org

• External link to EURING

http://www.euring.org/

• External link to list of Ringing schemes affiliated to EURING

http://www.euring.org/national_schemes/contact_schemes.htm