Website on a metal ring (1 Viewer)

[Colin]

I have read many metal rings with my scope including, for example, gulls from all over Europe with rings from Sweden, Estonia, Norway, Germany etc. and of course, British rings with the inscriptions of BTO, London SW7 etc. I am familiar with the layout of most ringing schemes as I have a paper copy of such layouts from a book I once saw.

Today I idly pointed the scope at a female Mallard expecting the usual British ring but the first thing I saw as the bottom line was "www.ring"... and the numbers were above that. I could not read the rest of the web address and just as I was about to start on the numbers, the bird began to walk and very soon entered the water and swam away and that was the end of that.

Can anyone throw any light on this and what the website might be and is it a new thing to have a URL on the ring? Thanks in advance.

 

[jeff]

www.ring.ac

is on the example ring on the bto website, so guess it's that?

http://www.bto.org/ringing/ringinfo/index.htm

 

[Mícheál]

Hi Colin,

Jeff is right.

As far as I know, the BTO put www.ring.ac on 'G' rings, the size used on Mallard, Herring Gull, LBB Gull, etc (some/all, not sure) on a trial basis to test whether it would affect recovery rates. I remember reading somewhere that it had a significant positive effect, so expect that we will see it on more rings. Mark Grantham may be able to shed light on the status of this trial.

I read some gull rings each year too for my sins, and have just recently switched over to using an SLR as it means I get a record of the ring and the bird it was on, and a lot of ambiguity, errors etc are eliminated. I looked back at this year's haul, and can see that the www.ring.ac address is only on the newer G rings. I think we will be seeing more of it.

Mícheál

Photos are on a page here http://www.sligobirding.com/RingReading2009.html

I have read many metal rings with my scope including, for example, gulls from all over Europe with rings from Sweden, Estonia, Norway, Germany etc. and of course, British rings with the inscriptions of BTO, London SW7 etc. I am familiar with the layout of most ringing schemes as I have a paper copy of such layouts from a book I once saw.

Today I idly pointed the scope at a female Mallard expecting the usual British ring but the first thing I saw as the bottom line was "www.ring"... and the numbers were above that. I could not read the rest of the web address and just as I was about to start on the numbers, the bird began to walk and very soon entered the water and swam away and that was the end of that.

Can anyone throw any light on this and what the website might be and is it a new thing to have a URL on the ring? Thanks in advance.

 

[Sy V]

Mícheál

Good info and some super Gull (ring) pictures.

FYI, G rings are used on:
Barn Owl
Black Grouse
Brent Goose
Buzzard
Common Scoter
Goldeneye
Herring Gull
LBBG (overlapped)
Little Egret
Long-eared Owl
Mallard
Peregrine
Pochard
Red-breasted Merganser
Red-crested Pochard
Red Kite
Red-necked Grebe
Scaup
Shelduck
Short-eared Owl
and Tawny Owl

Regards

 

[Sy V]

Colin

I bet 'ring.ac' is used because of the need for brevity given the size of some of the rings (should this practice be adopted throughout the size range) and the amount of other data required to be included.

'ring.ac' redirects you to "blx1.bto.org/euring/main/"

 

[Mark Grantham]

Yep, this sounds right. We started the trial a few years ago now (on some F and G rings), and its been pretty successful. For a species like Barn Owl, the ring reporting rate goes up by over 20% for rings with a web address on them! All rings also carry a postal address, but the web address just makes life easier.

The same web address is being used by several other European schemes though, so a www.ring.ac bird isn't necessarily a BTO-ringed one. The online reporting form it links to is now available in over a dozen languages, and we just loaded Slovakian and Bulgarian the other week!

In the future we should be putting the address on more rings, but we won't be replacing the postal address any time soon (if ever). Size wise, we should be able to fit it on rings down to Blackbird size...

Mark Grantham
BTO Ringing Scheme

 

[Colin]

Thanks everyone for the information. So, it is relatively new and only on certain sizes which explains somewhat why I had not come across it before. Thanks again.