Start of ringing

Ringing: What does that actually mean? Many of our guests at the NABU Crane Center have heard the word in connection with ornithological field research, but very few visitors know what exactly we want to find out and how the ringing of a crane is done. We would like to inform you a little bit more about this in the next weeks - parallel to our work outside with the cranes.

Last week, a small team of the NABU Crane Center was on the island of Rügen, where we had intensively searched for breeding territories and nests in advance this year. Thanks to the support of Matthias Bräse, seven young cranes were color-marked there in one day.

As shown in the photo, each crane is assigned a unique combination of a total of six colored plastic rings: The three rings on the left leg provide information about the country of origin, while the three rings on the right are the bird's individual code. If you are now worried that the cranes could be disturbed, hindered or even constricted by the rings, we would like to reassure you: The 6 rings weigh a total of only a few grams and their diameter is chosen so that they fit loosely even on adult cranes. Furthermore, only experienced and certified ringers are allowed to ring. So we do our best to carry out the procedures necessary for basic research as efficiently, gently and carefully as possible.

If you have always wondered how a ringing operation actually works, then you can look forward to the next article on ringing!

So it is urgently time to address the question of how much of the nighttime lighting we actually need and what we can safely do without. For the sake of our migratory birds! And: more efficient and environmentally compatible lighting in both the private and commercial sectors will of course also benefit other species groups such as insects and bats to the greaest extent!