Pied Flycatcher. ( dressed for Christmas)
My biggest dissapointment this year. My son and I spent a long time putting a hide up after we had finally found a Pied in a qiet place. The birds were used to the hide and there were no problems.
This is what we found when we had the first session. Both birds had been caught in the box and ringed with 4 rings each.
On top of that the bird had three un hatched eggs and two chicks.
In all the time this has been going on in the forest( twenty years ) there have been no useful returns. I am in contact with the BTO and if you get the impression that I am against ringing - you are dead right - especially this sort .
I too object strongly to what appears to be "recreational ringing" as seen in this shot.
I do think that in certain circumstances ringing has a place, but only when the benefits are there for the conservation of the species concerned.
Recently there seems to be a big increase in people ringing as an extension of their birdwatching hobby, and the ringing that they do serves no genuine purpose and is very likely detrimental to the welfare of the individual birds.
Us photographers come in for a degree of criticism from a wide area of the birding community, (with some individuals it's justified) but I doubt any of our activities cause as much stress and disturbance to birds as ringing does.
Hanging upside down in mistnets, handling, and the subsequent stress of actually having the ring on the leg, cannot in my opinion be good for the birds welfare, particularly in winter when food is scarce and harder to find, this manhandling activity takes a large chunk of the bird's daylight feeding time away aswell, and that could be the difference between surviving a cold night, or not!
I forgot to mention that the rings in fact have not been put on properly anyway.
The idea of this "scheme" is so that adults can be identified without catching them again. That I find strange as the ringer only comes in the forest about three times a year to ring anyway. The only info they have is that if a bird breeds in an area in Wyre the young may come back in the future, Big deal !
Thanks for the compliment Trevor.
There's not much leg left to clone them out either !!!
JR
I find ringing can serve a useful purpose with certain species if done in the right circumstances by professionals! i.e. Ornithologists studying the migration paths of a particular species. However it has become an unfortunate that certain individuals fill compelled to ring everything insight just because they can. One ring is bad enough but two is just ridiculous and it serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever! I really hope that this uprising craze doesn’t encroach over here anytime soon!
Nice to see I am not the only one who is like minded, I agree 100 percent with the above, and feel this would cause a huge amount of stress to small birds,and from a photographic point of view it ruins a photo,with un sightly rings or wing tags on birds......
Stewart.......
As a long-time birder and relative newcomer to wildlife photography I couldn't agree more. Structured observatory ringing programmes are one thing, and have no doubt taught us a lot, but it does seem that a certain amount of ringing is done with little hope of genuine scientific benefit, and more because some people like getting their hands on the birds.
Rings aside, a delightful shot - I very much enjoy your work even when I don't comment on it.
Not a great image but a grab shot from the last hard weather we had, I wonder how long the Blue Tit would have lasted if the weather had stayed around.
Andy
Shows the point very well. I,ve seen this on more birds than I can remember.
It has to stop somewhere. Ringing might have taught us a hellof a lot 50 years ago.
Cheers
JohnR
Hi all,
Just to give some balance to the debate here, this is a link to the BTO's Retrapping for Annual Survival page:http://www.bto.org/ringing/ringinfo/ras/index.htm, which is probably what this pied flycatcher has been ringed for. Although I agree that the rings ruin birds as photographic subjects, many birds are in serious decline in this country and the rest of Europe, and it is important to find out what is going on. The birds decline because of changes in birth and death rates, and colour ringing enables detailed work on populations to be carried out without the need to repeatedly trap birds (making it more of a resighting adults for annual survival scheme). There's only so much you can do if you can't ID particular individuals. However, I would agree that ad hoc recreational ringing probably gleans very little useful data, which has more to object about.
I'm researching the impact of climate change on long distance migrants, and am colour ringing wheatears on Fair Isle so that I can monitor them throughout the season and to find out what annual survival rates are under different environmental conditions. There is also a long-term starling research project here that relies on colour ringing data.
I also agree totally with all that has been said above
Working as the conservation officer here at the Barn Owl Centre & working with over 1200 Owl boxes in place, the question I get asked a lot is "Do we provide data to localised BTO Ringers"? The answer to this question is "We used to but not anymore!
Why, simply because I think the disturbance can be to stressful for them & when we used to allow BTO ringers to the boxes, they talked about placing nets outside the entrance hole to catch any fleeing Owls so they can stick a ring on it. To stressful IMO. more thought on the leg ring than the bird.
Working with a scheduled species, I do know how important data can be to those who are working with the species, this includes me. I get more data from observation than that of a leg ring. That is my personal opinion.
If a Barn Owl was found dead or alive & it was rung, we might be very lucky to receive quick info back from the BTO, this normally takes up to six months or even longer.
My personally opinion on conservation is help these birds, take records such as nest records & observe at a safe distance once the data is collected using a good lens or a good scope.
If the ringer isn't monitoring these birds then I agree that the colour ringing is pointless. You said you are in contact with the BTO about it, so I would think they'll investigate.
Forgot to reply to Trevor - the point about colour rings is so that you can ID birds without capturing them again - you can't possibly read the inscription on a metal ring with binoculars or a telescope! A number of colour rings are used on one bird so that you don't run out of combinations.
Vincent - interesting point about not allowing ringers to the barn owl boxes any more. Sometimes (often?) ringing seems like an extension of twitching (but ticking off all the species that you've stuck a ring on), which doesn't tend to help birds very much either! By the way, I'm not in either of those camps!
I agree this is a thought-provoking thread, thanks John for starting it.
Surely in this modern age, we must know all the useful information about the birds already. Even though i have a masters degree and am actually fairly intelligent, I admit to being rather confused, how can ringing a bird on Fair Isle tell us anything about their survival rates ? If you do not see a colour ringed bird the following year does this mean it is dead ? Or merely at a different location ?
As you may surmise, i am totally against ringing, not just for the aesthetics in photos, but more importantly for the distress it must cause. A few very good friends of mine have given up ringing, one having been a ringer for 30 years, as they see no further point to it.
Thank goodness for someone with the guts to make their views public. I keep thinking I'm the only one! I've been at odds with the RSPB here in Forest of Dean (Nagshead) for some years over this issue. No good feedback so far, in fact, they positively make sure they don't respond to this sort of critisicm. What's worse here, is that the ringers think they "own" the birds (pied flycatchers) and do everything they can to stop photographers and the public enjoying close encounters of them. This year the man in charge has made sure all nest boxes were away from any path, with footpath closure notices just in case you wanted to see them up close. This man and his ignorant helpers do more damage ringing the birds than any photographer could do. But he blames photographers and dogwalkers for their demise instead of his own brutal disturbance tactics of ringing them. I've asked him and the RSPB (nicely) what info he gets from this, and the reply is often a joke (ummm, inter-sibling breeding, etc). This ringing has been ongoing sice 1946 - and for what? It's rubbish.
This is not conservation and should be stopped. the RSPB should be accountable for this totally fruitless disturbance, in what i call academic masturbation.
Well done john and everyone here who thinks the same. Do something about it!
Dave
Forest of Dean, UK
Oops, sorry mods - this is conservation and not photography!
Tom
When I get the reply from head of ringing at the BTO ,to whom I understand my gripe has been sent , I will pass it on to you.I've been going on at them for three years now
Usually its a kind of standard preformed letter though.
We'll see. Its usually a closing ranks job,which I can partly understand I suppose..
Lets not get too far from photos though Eh ? !
Cheers
John
All human activity has some negative impact on the natural world ranging from the totally insignificant to the totally catastrophic, I'll leave you the reader to think of examples of both.
John's image is technically excellent as usual and highlights a genuine problem that needs to be redressed. Unfortuately there is no easy answer. There are occasions when ringing has helped find out things that wouldn't have been discovered if ringing hadn't been carried out.
Perhaps humans should be ringed soon after birth then there would be no need for the billions to be spent on a National ID card. Money that could be better spent on mitigating
the human-caused environmental crisis that threatens our planet.
I'd be annoyed too if the photo at the top was mine as its otherwise excellent! I do think the important thing is whether the stress the birds inevitably suffer has any long-term effect, and whether any stress that is caused is outweighed by conservation benefits.
Unfortunately very little work has been carried out investigating the impact of bird handling and ringing on bird behaviour, survival, perfomance etc. I just tried the searches impact AND " bird ringing" followed by stress AND "bird ringing" in a scientific journal database. It came up with 1 article, which wasn't relevant. Its something my PhD supervisor is interested in and it would be good to see what he finds, and how the ringing community would react if the results were not what they wanted. However, the wheatears I've ringed here continue to act as any would. The pied flycatcher pictured above doesn't appear to have anything wrong with it either. And a large amount of interesting and useful data comes out of ringers' efforts, much of which is important to target conservation work in the best way.
David, don't give the government any ideas about human ringing!
I can understand that there are instances where ringing has helped us to understand migration patterns and enabled us to tailor conservation efforts so that they do the most good, but this is becoming absurd. De-mystifying nature is all well and good, but once we have attached a label to everything it is no longer truly wild for me.
Seeing this would have ruined my day too.
Another superb image BTW. Eric
I think that a lot of the views in this thread seem to be coming from concern about the welfare of the individual bird, which whilst highly commendable maybe misses the point. Ask yourself this: which is more critical, the survival of the individual or the survival of the species as a whole? Nature's view on this question is very clear -- the survival of the species far outweighs the needs of any individual.
Ringing may well be stressful for the ringed individuals, however they do survive their ordeals and the information gained from doing so can be vital in efforts to understand bird populations and their movements. This sort of information is in turn important in prioritising efforts to protect habitats and important wildlife sites.
Colour ringing, as explained above, is a means by which information can be gained without the need to retrap; it yields more information for less interference. If it upsets a few photographers, well sorry but the welfare of the species outweighs the need to capture a few nice images.
The question "surely in this day and age we know everything?" is an interesting one. NERC spends quite a bit of tax-payers money (£375M in 2006/7). Depending on your point-of-view this is either a colossal waste of tax-payers hard-earned readdies which should be stopped immediately, or alternatively a demonstration of the scale of our ignorance of how the natural world works.
(i)Colour ringing, as explained above, is a means by which information can be gained without the need to retrap; it yields more information for less interference.(/i)
Hi Richard.
Interesting reply.
However I would be interested to know what possible knowledge of any real import could be gained from the ringing of the bird in the picture.
Cheers
John
Its a lovely shot John, and only the absurd overkill of ringing degrades it.
I suspect it is just a sign of the times, and much of todays ringing is done because it can be done..........and not because it needs to be done. Probably some jobs-worth trying to justify his/her existence.
Ive decided to restrain myself from further comment on this subject , as i am likely to burst a blood vessel
Here is a report from when I went on a BTO Ringing Weekend. http://peregrinesbirdblog.blogspot.com/2007/03/bto-ireland-bird-ringing-training.html
I personally wish that all ringing was colour ringing as I spend many hours out birdwatching and over the years have come across many birds that have a single silver ring and you have no idea of its history or reason behind the ringing.
On the other hand you may come across a colour ringed bird such as a ringed plover as I did last may.
Here is the result http://peregrinesbirdblog.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
Go down half the page.
Ok if you are photographing birds it is obviously a lot nicer not to have the rings. However I do feel that there is a science behind the ringing and if you read some of the BTO Journals it is fascinating to find out what for example your Pied Flycatcher has been upto.
Sorry Craig but if past examples are anything to go by no one will hear of this bird again.
There have been no returns from colour ringing in Wyre to my knowledge and very few birds make it back the second year anyway. The ringer will not tell us want happened to "his " bird because he will not be in the forest looking for them. Its not just the ringing its the fact that sticking box traps to catch adults in the nest is not disturbance according to the scientists but sticking a camera up 40 feet away is. I am sure a bird trapped in a box fluttering about above newly hatched chicks waiting for someone to come and stick some rings on it , is disturbance.
Unless I am a complete idiot.
Cheers
JohnR
Is ringing birds a thing of the past? Read the information in the below link, this gets interest people involved & with no rings being placed on birds. Personally I think this works brilliantly plus it gets people out & about looking for birds with minimal disturbance, much better IMO plus the the birds are not handled.
Link here
http://www.birder.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Atlas.htm
I understand that there is probably a point behind colour ringing, but 4 rings??? What can four tell you that one or two can't? Do these rings tell us how many birds have died because they were rung and stressed out in the process or received injuries because of the rings existence. Andy Darringtons picture earlier in the thread of the bluey with an iced up ring showed a bird that was at very best going to lose a toe and probably the ring as well. I remember some rail shots in which the leg looked very swollen as well. A ring can be nice and loose but what is there to stop something (mud or ice) getting stuck behind it and putting pressure on the leg? I would be interested to know how many rings are returned from corpses every year.
The point of colour ringing is to identify individuals. If you only used one or two colour rings, you would quickly run out of different combinations (and there are only so many different colours that can be distinguished in the field). It would be completely defeating the object if you reused the same combination of colours on different birds as you could no longer tell them apart. Colour rings also weigh next to nothing.
Discussion
31 repliesMy biggest dissapointment this year. My son and I spent a long time putting a hide up after we had finally found a Pied in a qiet place. The birds were used to the hide and there were no problems.
This is what we found when we had the first session. Both birds had been caught in the box and ringed with 4 rings each.
On top of that the bird had three un hatched eggs and two chicks.
In all the time this has been going on in the forest( twenty years ) there have been no useful returns. I am in contact with the BTO and if you get the impression that I am against ringing - you are dead right - especially this sort .
John Robinson
I do think that in certain circumstances ringing has a place, but only when the benefits are there for the conservation of the species concerned.
Recently there seems to be a big increase in people ringing as an extension of their birdwatching hobby, and the ringing that they do serves no genuine purpose and is very likely detrimental to the welfare of the individual birds.
Us photographers come in for a degree of criticism from a wide area of the birding community, (with some individuals it's justified) but I doubt any of our activities cause as much stress and disturbance to birds as ringing does.
Hanging upside down in mistnets, handling, and the subsequent stress of actually having the ring on the leg, cannot in my opinion be good for the birds welfare, particularly in winter when food is scarce and harder to find, this manhandling activity takes a large chunk of the bird's daylight feeding time away aswell, and that could be the difference between surviving a cold night, or not!
Shame it detracts from a wonderful shot
The idea of this "scheme" is so that adults can be identified without catching them again. That I find strange as the ringer only comes in the forest about three times a year to ring anyway. The only info they have is that if a bird breeds in an area in Wyre the young may come back in the future, Big deal !
Thanks for the compliment Trevor.
There's not much leg left to clone them out either !!!
JR
I find ringing can serve a useful purpose with certain species if done in the right circumstances by professionals! i.e. Ornithologists studying the migration paths of a particular species. However it has become an unfortunate that certain individuals fill compelled to ring everything insight just because they can. One ring is bad enough but two is just ridiculous and it serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever! I really hope that this uprising craze doesn’t encroach over here anytime soon!
Stewart.......
Rings aside, a delightful shot - I very much enjoy your work even when I don't comment on it.
Simon
Paul
Not a great image but a grab shot from the last hard weather we had, I wonder how long the Blue Tit would have lasted if the weather had stayed around.
Can't get image to load so I have put direct link
Andy
Shows the point very well. I,ve seen this on more birds than I can remember.
It has to stop somewhere. Ringing might have taught us a hellof a lot 50 years ago.
Cheers
JohnR
Just to give some balance to the debate here, this is a link to the BTO's Retrapping for Annual Survival page:http://www.bto.org/ringing/ringinfo/ras/index.htm, which is probably what this pied flycatcher has been ringed for. Although I agree that the rings ruin birds as photographic subjects, many birds are in serious decline in this country and the rest of Europe, and it is important to find out what is going on. The birds decline because of changes in birth and death rates, and colour ringing enables detailed work on populations to be carried out without the need to repeatedly trap birds (making it more of a resighting adults for annual survival scheme). There's only so much you can do if you can't ID particular individuals. However, I would agree that ad hoc recreational ringing probably gleans very little useful data, which has more to object about.
I'm researching the impact of climate change on long distance migrants, and am colour ringing wheatears on Fair Isle so that I can monitor them throughout the season and to find out what annual survival rates are under different environmental conditions. There is also a long-term starling research project here that relies on colour ringing data.
That's a rather longer reply than I intended!
Adam
Yes - but you are monitoring what you have colour ringed.
This ringer isn't.
Cheers
John
Working as the conservation officer here at the Barn Owl Centre & working with over 1200 Owl boxes in place, the question I get asked a lot is "Do we provide data to localised BTO Ringers"? The answer to this question is "We used to but not anymore!
Why, simply because I think the disturbance can be to stressful for them & when we used to allow BTO ringers to the boxes, they talked about placing nets outside the entrance hole to catch any fleeing Owls so they can stick a ring on it. To stressful IMO. more thought on the leg ring than the bird.
Working with a scheduled species, I do know how important data can be to those who are working with the species, this includes me. I get more data from observation than that of a leg ring. That is my personal opinion.
If a Barn Owl was found dead or alive & it was rung, we might be very lucky to receive quick info back from the BTO, this normally takes up to six months or even longer.
My personally opinion on conservation is help these birds, take records such as nest records & observe at a safe distance once the data is collected using a good lens or a good scope.
Good thread
If the ringer isn't monitoring these birds then I agree that the colour ringing is pointless. You said you are in contact with the BTO about it, so I would think they'll investigate.
Forgot to reply to Trevor - the point about colour rings is so that you can ID birds without capturing them again - you can't possibly read the inscription on a metal ring with binoculars or a telescope! A number of colour rings are used on one bird so that you don't run out of combinations.
Vincent - interesting point about not allowing ringers to the barn owl boxes any more. Sometimes (often?) ringing seems like an extension of twitching (but ticking off all the species that you've stuck a ring on), which doesn't tend to help birds very much either! By the way, I'm not in either of those camps!
I agree this is a thought-provoking thread, thanks John for starting it.
All the best,
Adam
Tim
As you may surmise, i am totally against ringing, not just for the aesthetics in photos, but more importantly for the distress it must cause. A few very good friends of mine have given up ringing, one having been a ringer for 30 years, as they see no further point to it.
Thank goodness for someone with the guts to make their views public. I keep thinking I'm the only one! I've been at odds with the RSPB here in Forest of Dean (Nagshead) for some years over this issue. No good feedback so far, in fact, they positively make sure they don't respond to this sort of critisicm. What's worse here, is that the ringers think they "own" the birds (pied flycatchers) and do everything they can to stop photographers and the public enjoying close encounters of them. This year the man in charge has made sure all nest boxes were away from any path, with footpath closure notices just in case you wanted to see them up close. This man and his ignorant helpers do more damage ringing the birds than any photographer could do. But he blames photographers and dogwalkers for their demise instead of his own brutal disturbance tactics of ringing them. I've asked him and the RSPB (nicely) what info he gets from this, and the reply is often a joke (ummm, inter-sibling breeding, etc). This ringing has been ongoing sice 1946 - and for what? It's rubbish.
This is not conservation and should be stopped. the RSPB should be accountable for this totally fruitless disturbance, in what i call academic masturbation.
Well done john and everyone here who thinks the same. Do something about it!
Dave
Forest of Dean, UK
Oops, sorry mods - this is conservation and not photography!
Tom.
When I get the reply from head of ringing at the BTO ,to whom I understand my gripe has been sent , I will pass it on to you.I've been going on at them for three years now
Usually its a kind of standard preformed letter though.
We'll see. Its usually a closing ranks job,which I can partly understand I suppose..
Lets not get too far from photos though Eh ? !
Cheers
John
John's image is technically excellent as usual and highlights a genuine problem that needs to be redressed. Unfortuately there is no easy answer. There are occasions when ringing has helped find out things that wouldn't have been discovered if ringing hadn't been carried out.
Perhaps humans should be ringed soon after birth then there would be no need for the billions to be spent on a National ID card. Money that could be better spent on mitigating
the human-caused environmental crisis that threatens our planet.
Unfortunately very little work has been carried out investigating the impact of bird handling and ringing on bird behaviour, survival, perfomance etc. I just tried the searches impact AND " bird ringing" followed by stress AND "bird ringing" in a scientific journal database. It came up with 1 article, which wasn't relevant. Its something my PhD supervisor is interested in and it would be good to see what he finds, and how the ringing community would react if the results were not what they wanted. However, the wheatears I've ringed here continue to act as any would. The pied flycatcher pictured above doesn't appear to have anything wrong with it either. And a large amount of interesting and useful data comes out of ringers' efforts, much of which is important to target conservation work in the best way.
David, don't give the government any ideas about human ringing!
Seeing this would have ruined my day too.
Another superb image BTW.
JohnR
Eric is telling what I think,
horrible vision: EVERY BIRD HAS 4 TO 8 RINGS!!!
And a long thread in differend color.
I am not joking!!
Bertl
Ringing may well be stressful for the ringed individuals, however they do survive their ordeals and the information gained from doing so can be vital in efforts to understand bird populations and their movements. This sort of information is in turn important in prioritising efforts to protect habitats and important wildlife sites.
Colour ringing, as explained above, is a means by which information can be gained without the need to retrap; it yields more information for less interference. If it upsets a few photographers, well sorry but the welfare of the species outweighs the need to capture a few nice images.
The question "surely in this day and age we know everything?" is an interesting one. NERC spends quite a bit of tax-payers money (£375M in 2006/7). Depending on your point-of-view this is either a colossal waste of tax-payers hard-earned readdies which should be stopped immediately, or alternatively a demonstration of the scale of our ignorance of how the natural world works.
Hi Richard.
Interesting reply.
However I would be interested to know what possible knowledge of any real import could be gained from the ringing of the bird in the picture.
Cheers
John
I suspect it is just a sign of the times, and much of todays ringing is done because it can be done..........and not because it needs to be done. Probably some jobs-worth trying to justify his/her existence.
Ive decided to restrain myself from further comment on this subject
Just my view, which i am entitled to!
Alan
I personally wish that all ringing was colour ringing as I spend many hours out birdwatching and over the years have come across many birds that have a single silver ring and you have no idea of its history or reason behind the ringing.
On the other hand you may come across a colour ringed bird such as a ringed plover as I did last may.
Here is the result http://peregrinesbirdblog.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html
Go down half the page.
Ok if you are photographing birds it is obviously a lot nicer not to have the rings. However I do feel that there is a science behind the ringing and if you read some of the BTO Journals it is fascinating to find out what for example your Pied Flycatcher has been upto.
There have been no returns from colour ringing in Wyre to my knowledge and very few birds make it back the second year anyway. The ringer will not tell us want happened to "his " bird because he will not be in the forest looking for them. Its not just the ringing its the fact that sticking box traps to catch adults in the nest is not disturbance according to the scientists but sticking a camera up 40 feet away is. I am sure a bird trapped in a box fluttering about above newly hatched chicks waiting for someone to come and stick some rings on it , is disturbance.
Unless I am a complete idiot.
Cheers
JohnR
Link here
http://www.birder.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Atlas.htm