The Group's activities
The RMRG was established in 1961 to ring and study birds at Rye Meads. Some three to five thousand birds are ringed annually, including large numbers of warblers. Recoveries of birds ringed at Rye Meads have contributed significantly to our understanding of the migration of British birds, and several scientific papers on bird populations and morphology have been based on RMRG data, which now covers over 200,000 birds of 139 species.
The Group's general activities
The RMRG is run entirely by volunteers, and operates mainly at weekends. Although we are subject to the supervision of the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), we are entirely self-financing.
Our activities are various: besides ringing, and general observations and recording of the birds of the site, the Group manages the habitat to a formal long-term Management Plan, with regular cutting and clearing; maintains large numbers of nest boxes; and maintains our ringing laboratories and equipment, permanent duck traps, a variety of mobile traps and mist nets, and a substantial library of reference works in support of identification, ageing and sexing of birds in the hand.
Scientific activities
The Group's scientific activities include:
- The general ringing of full-grown birds trapped with "mist nets" and duck traps, and the ringing of pulli (nestlings). Each full-grown bird caught or retrapped is taken to a fully equipped ringing laboratory, where it is examined to identify its age and sex, where possible, and biometric measurements are taken. This data has been collected since the Group's formation in 1961, and is available for analysis. Not only Group members but also third parties have used this information to develop scientific papers on many aspects of bird migration and morphology.
- Each year, we conduct a full breeding survey of the entire site, to establish as far as possible the number of breeding territories and, where possible, evidence of breeding success for each species occuring on site. Every nest found is recorded in detail for the BTO's Nest Records Scheme - we have completed to date over 10,000 Nest Record Cards for 70 species.
- The Group has also contributed since 1993 to the BTO's Constant Effort Sites programme, whereby consistent and regular bird trapping over a number of years at sites like this all over the country can yield information on national population trends.
Training new ringers
One final, and important, activity which the Group undertakes is in the training of new bird ringers. All ringers are licensed by the Government under a scheme administered by the BTO, and to reach the necessary degree of competence to ring unsupervised takes a long and painstaking apprenticeship. The Group has several qualified Trainers and supports a number of trainee ringers at any one time.
If you are interested in training to become a ringer, see here for more information.
If you are already a trainee or a 'rusty' ringer, and you are interested in broadening or polishing your experience, we would be pleased to discuss how we might help - see here for contact details.
Supporting other groups
RMRG is pleased to support other ringing groups if our help is requested. Thus we work actively with the North Thames Gull Group (NTGG), several of our members also being members of that group, in their work to trap and ring gulls at landfill sites along the Thames estuary.
In another example, we provided a guest speaker at a public conference hosted by a ringing group in Porto, Portugal, who operate at the Parque Biológico de Gaia. See here for a report on this trip.