HISTORY OF THE SCIENTIFIC
RINGING OF BIRDS
We can look briefly at the history of ringing, the first data
coming from an incident in the 18th.century , when at a lagoon in
Gerona a bird ringed in Ireland was recovered. This finding
(lacking any scientific interest since it possessed no
identification number) was recorded by the Notary of the County of
Ampurias in a manuscript dated 1777, in which it says that a bird,
possibly a duck, carried on its leg " a piece of brass in which two
or three years before had engraved letters indicating : that the
bird had been trapped in Ireland".
Ringing a pullus of Yellow Legged Gull (Larus michahellis)
with a PVC ring
From that time there was evidence of other ringing experiments in
other European countries, but in 1899 in Denmark the first
scientific ringing in history by the Dane,Mortensen was performed.
In Spain it was in 1952 that the first important ringing programme
was carried out by the Basque society " Aranzadi" , and these
days,even now,the pioneering work of this society is much acclaimed.
Two years later S.E.O was created. (Spanish Ornithological Society).
In 1957 this was followed by the formation of the birds migration
centre, in 1982 ,the National committee for bird ringing and in
1983, the ringing office.
The interchange of data and the coordination between Spain and the
rest of Europe is carried out by the European Committee for bird
ringing (EURING), created in 1963,with the headquarters in Holland,
where a data bank has existed since 1975 that stores the information
on the all birds ringed on our continent.
