Bird Ecology and Conservation A Handbook of Techniques

In the first instance, the Worldwide Web gives basic information about many
national ringing schemes and banding programs.
In countries where there is no bird-ringing scheme and no specific legislation
covering ringing, it will usually also be necessary to obtain some form of state
permission to trap birds in the country. If difficulty is found in obtaining relevant
contact details for a country, the national ringing schemes of other countries
(such as the British Trust for Ornithology in the United Kingdomshould be
able to advise). In countries with no ringing/banding scheme of their own, inter-
national agreement dictates which nationality’s rings may be used there (typically
a former colonial nation), and it will be necessary to operate through the ringing
scheme of that country. So, for example, while British rings should be used in the
West African state of Gambia, in neighboring Senegal, French rings must be
used. Further information on legislation and ethical matters relating to animals
(including bird ringing) is given in Brooman and Legge (1997), while the North
American banding manual (NABM), which can be viewed online, is useful in
North America.
The requirement to capture and mark, in the most benign way, the minimum
number of birds necessary for the research involved does not simply mean that
fewer is more ethical. If too few birds have been processed to yield statistically
meaningful conclusions, then the captures made will have been wasted, and that
is, arguably, unethical too. Much depends on the questions asked and on statist-
ical power. For example, to determine the timing of molt might take just a few
dozen captures; to map migration may require many thousands of birds to be
ringed in order to provide a relatively small number of recoveries. The costs to the
birds should be small in either case.

4.3 Catching the birds

A wide range of techniques is available for live-trapping birds, many of them
developed long ago. The diversity of capture techniques reflects both local
independent developments for similar purposes (e.g. the wide variety of walk-in
traps for shorebirds), and the diverse requirements for trapping different taxa
(wildfowl, raptors, passerines). In any case, some trapping methods favor naïve
or vulnerable birds. For example, cage traps may be avoided by all but starving

Catching the birds| 87

At the time of writing, the following URLs are useful sources of contact email addresses for national

ringing and banding programs: http://www.birdsinthe.net, http://www.wildlifeweb.f 9.co.uk/intro.html/content.htm,

http://www.euring.org/ContactSchemes.html, http://web.tiscali.it/sv2001/cormo_centre.htm#Australia, http://www.aves.net/

the-owl/blnkobsv.htm, http://www.uct.ac.za/depts/stats/adu/safring-index.htm www.bto.org

www.pwrc.usgs.gov/bbl/manual/manual.htm