EURING GENERAL MEETING - Chemnitz 2003

Report of the Hiddensee Ringing Centre

1. Organisation

The official status of the ringing centre is that of a branch of the Office for Environment & Nature Conservation and Geology of the german federal state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Annual funds are jointly provided by the five east german federal states.

Those funds have been strongly reduced because the donors do not agree in an annual dynamisation according to the minimal costs of the centre. Personal costs take four fifth of the budget.The Ringing Centre will be faced to serious problems if the federal states will not agree in an appropriate dynamisation of annual funds.

2. Staff

As before, 3 non-academic (Eva Fredrich, Simone Scheil, Harry Schröder) and 1 academic full-time (Ulrich Köppen). No part-time clerks are currently employed.

3. Ringers & ringing courses

Four-day ringers’ courses are held annually. In 2002, 14 participants got their special certificate for having succesfully passed the course which is a precondition to apply for ringer’s licenses. Licenses are issued by nature conservation offices of the federal states. In 2003, 289 Hiddensee ringers are licensed.

4. Rings

Rings are imported from Sweden as required. Ringers don’t have to pay for the rings. There are 17 different sizes of Hiddensee rings in use.

5. Ringing projects

A large variety of different ringing projects is offered to those ringers who do not use the ringing method for their own scientific purposes. Contribution of ringers to large-scale ringing programmes is preferably supported by the nature conservation authorities of the federal states.

International:
- EURING Swallow: 21 sites (whole Germany), appr. 5,000 ind.ringed,
- White-tailed Eagle cr-programme: ca. 100 nestlings ringed / year
- Wader-Wetland-Inland: 7 sites
- EURING-target species
- Peregrine: ~ 100 nestlings ringeg / a,
- Common Crane: ~ 70 ind. ringed / a,
- International Monitoring of Raptors& Owls: about 50 sites, ca. 10.000 ind. ringed/a,

national (selection):
- Integrated Monitoring Songbird-Populations= German CES-project : 23 sites
- Osprey cr-programme, 2002: 573 nestlings ringed,
- White Stork, 2002: 1.121 nestlings ringed,
- Bearded Tit, 2.650 ind. ringed in 2002,

regional, local:
more than 50 projects dealing with certain species or special phenomena at different spatial scales.

6. Ringing & recoveries

a) Annual numbers of ringed birds, recoveries and totals

*) 247 species **) short term retraps included ***) 412 species; since 1964

b) Annual numbers of (finally elaborated) reports of foreign ringed birds:

2000: 1.048
2001: 2.473
2002: 3.185

7. Data management

A computer programme is freely distributed to the ringers enabling them to put both ringing data and recoveries/retraps directly into computer files. In 2002 again about 80% of the years’ data were delivered at floppy disks. Both ringing and recovery data of the year are entirely filed at computers at the ringing centre since 1977. Beginning in 1993 all data of foreign ringed birds are computerised as well. Computerisation of older data of Hiddensee and foreign rings is still on the way.

8. Use of data

In 2002, 311.985 data records were provided to > 70 inland and foreign persons/ institutions who had applied for data. In July 2003 the whole set of Hiddensee data was translated into the New Euring code and delivered to the EDB. Annual reports are provided regularly to the EURING member schemes.

9. Address

Beringungszentrale Hiddensee
Hiddensee Bird Ringing Centre
An der Muehle 4.
D-17493 Greifswald
e-mail: beringung@mail.hnm.de
Telefon: +49 (0)3834 830930
Telefax: +49 (0)3834 830939

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