Our manual

Our manual
“Bird Station Manual” is now used as a basic text on bird ringing techniques in many countries, and translations into Arabic and Turkish are being prepared. This comprehensive (264 pages, 154 figures) publication covers the practical aspects of bird ringing that are helpful to anyone working professionally on bird migration. The authors are very experienced ringers, most of them working as heads of scientific ringing programmes over several decades. This experience, found in the Manual, provides the potential reader with a very unique opportunity to learn from it and avoid a number problems that a beginner could face.
The first part of the book includes a detailed description of fieldwork methodology. It starts with an overview of the different kinds of bird traps, followed by a description of laboratory equipment, the standard set of measurements and their techniques, and includes several procedures that make the ringing process easier and quicker. A separate, comprehensive chapter is devoted to the wader ringing station and the techniques used there.
The standard procedures applied at the SEEN ringing station are given in great detail. These also include orientation tests with Busse’s cage. Other, alternative techniques of bird handling and measurements are given as well.
The second part of the Manual is focused on data analysis methods. Here are found both the theoretical basis as well as several practical recommendations. This book covers all the techniques of elaborating different kinds of data that are collected at bird ringing field stations: seasonal and long-term dynamics, biometrical data (including the correlative topography method), recoveries and orientation cage test results. Here the reader can find not only standard analytical methods commonly used in bird migration study analyses, but also several innovative data elaboration methods and a completely new approach to several theoretical aspects of the bird migration phenomenon. Complex, sophisticated mathematical and statistical problems are provided in a simple and clear manner. Although the innovative approach of the main author is open to discussion – one can either agree or disagree – it would be regrettable not to include it in this volume.

“Bird Station Manual” received the positive acknowledgement of specialists, including a review in the Auk journal and Ornithologischer Anzeiger.