The Ring

A couple of days ago The Diary was given this bird ring by Nan MacLachlan. She had found it in a field in Ormsaigbeg, still attached to a leg. She had kindly removed it from the emaciated and rather smelly remains and wrapped it in a polythene bag. Sadly, the bird was so decomposed she couldn't identify it.

After immersing the ring in a Dettol solution, it was seen to carry the code R73 660, and, in much smaller letters, BRIT. MUSEUM, LONDON S.W.7. Two minutes on the British Museum's website, using the search phrase 'bird ring', led to a link to the Euring site, where Euring stands for the European Union for Bird Ringing. Reporting is easy - there's a standard form to fill out, and an automated response arrived within minutes.

Euring co-ordinates and promotes bird ringing across Europe, its main task being to collect reports of the finding of bird rings. It's good to think that the information we've given may help researchers to understand more about a species which visits or is resident on Ardnamurchan, but it'll be interesting to see if anyone gets back to us to tell us what the bird was, and whether Nan found anything particularly unusual.

The Euring site is here.