Bird ringing: Guest post by Chris Laning

 

Bird ringing is nothing like bell ringing: it's what in the USA we call bird banding. Banding birds provides an inexpensive way of tracking large numbers of individual birds, especially those that migrate long distance. A small, lightweight aluminum band is clamped around one leg of the bird: it's stamped with a serial number and an address. Anyone who finds a dead bird with a band is encouraged to report it to the address given, with a note of when and where it was found. Because so many...