Two birds in a million

There are currently over 2700 volunteer bird ringers all over the country, ringing birds and collecting vital information on bird movements and life histories.

Last year was a great breeding season for most birds and produced lots of young to breed this year. With this in mind and with the increase in the number of ringers, 2010 will be forever known as the year that over a million birds were ringed for the first time! So far a total of 1,047,092 birds were ringed and have been loaded into our database.


The millionth bird is a bit harder to calculate as a Yellowhammer ringed by the Grampian Ringing Group near Collieston, Aberdeenshire and a Coal Tit ringed by David Proll near Raglan, Gwent were both ringed at the same time, 2pm on 5 December.

Thanks to all our ringers who made this possible.

More information is on our news pages on our website.

Thanks to Rachael Portnall for the photo.