IKKUNA NEWS: Bird ringing or bird banding is the attachment of small, individually numbered metal or plastic tag to the leg or wing of a wild bird to enable individual identification. The main aim of bird ringing is to watch the birds and study them. A person who rings the bird is called a ringer.
– It is important to follow different birds, their populations, how they survive, where they migrate and where they nest. The practice of bird ringing has been in existence in Finland for over a hundred years. There are over 600 active ringers in Finland at the moment, says Stefan Sjöholm, a ringer from Maalahti.
– One can see it as a hobby, but it is not just a hobby because it has scientific goals. All ringers collect facts about the birds they ring and take different kind of measurements like weight, age, sex, wingspan, knee thickness and the condition of the bird.
These facts can be used by other scientists when studying the ringed birds.
Becoming a ringer. One has to study birds and go through an exam before being qualified as a ringer. The result of the exam can determine how many kinds of birds one gets the permit to ring.
There is also an exam to ring only one kind of bird. To ring a bird, one has to study well about the bird and know everything about it. Before becoming a ringer, one has to assist a senior qualified ringer. Sjöholm assisted Jouni Kannonlahti for three years before taking the exam.
– I assisted to check herring gulls, common gulls and crows. These birds are easy to find and ring. It is also important to get rare birds or else you lose interest.
Sjöholm has the permission to ring birds himself and it is the second summer that he is doing it alone. He has the permit to ring about 10 different kinds on birds.
– It is recommended that there are two people as safety is the primary concern. Anything can happen when you are alone in the woods. Also, it is easier to take measurements when you have another person.
The inspiration. Stefan got interested in the bird rings from 1999 when a sea gull nested on a rock in their summer house. It immediately caught his attention and took him about two months to read the bird’s ring with a binocular. He tried to become friends with it that summer but couldn’t as it did not come closer.
– I sent the number of the ring to Helsinki and got a report saying the bird was ringed in 1994 in West Flanders, Belgium. The bird kept coming back every year for more than 10 years and nested on the same rock. I became friends with it and had a signal to call. He would come to get food as soon as he heard it.
In 2010, the bird stopped coming and that got Stefan thinking about the bird and he gave a serious thought about becoming a ring master himself.
The journey. Stefan has marked 4 different kinds and a total of 109 birds till date. He and his assistant have ringed about 43 lapwings, which are hard to spot. Only 150 of them have been ringed in Finland between 1974 and 2015.
– This summer has been too cold and the water level too high for incubation and hatching. Many nests were drowned by the high water level. It is bad as summer is short and it takes a few weeks for the birds to grow, says Sjöholm.
– A girl from Vaasa called me this summer to ring a few birds on the terrace of her building. When I got there I noticed rings on both legs of one of the parent. I read the rings and got the report that this sea gull was marked in Holland.
He ringed the baby birds born in Vaasa and has a family tree of them. He even got in touch with the ringer in Holland who had ringed one of the parents to inform him about the baby birds.
Rathan Kumar