The EURING Data Bank – a critical tool for continental-scale studies of marked birds

Abstract

The European Union for Bird Ringing (EURING) coordinates bird ringing at a continental scale and operates the EURING Data Bank (EDB) to facilitate large-scale analyses of movements and demography. The EDB contains over 10 million individual encounter records which are summarised on a publicly available website, the EDB index. EURING welcomes applications to analyse these data. Ring-recovery data from the EDB contribute to research on many ecological issues, particularly migration and movements, hunting, mortality causes, disease transmission, population dynamics and dispersal. Recent developments will facilitate the incorporation of comprehensive sets of first-encounter records and local recaptures which are essential for robust quantitative studies of population dynamics and movements. Furthermore, the recent inclusion of fields for moult, measurements and weights within the EURING code will facilitate novel research at a European scale. We expect increasing use of the EDB for quantitative studies of avian demography and movements with high applied value. Wherever possible, this research should also incorporate complementary ecological information. EURING’s immediate priority is the production of a European Migration Atlas that would provide an up-to-date synthesis of the movements of European bird populations, with many direct implications for their conservation.