Development of bird ringing in Croatia and neighbouring countries in the period 1910-1992: new perspectives

Background and Purpose: Based oil preserved original bird ringers' reports published annual reports on bird ringing, the development of the ringing of birds in Croatia from 1910 to 1992 is discussed ill this paper After the breakdown of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (1918), Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia made tip the common country of Yugoslavia until 1992. Bird ringing is today organized independently in each of the newly founded states so new reports should not be cummulatively added to the older collective ones. The aim of this article is to emphasize the need of organizing the data collected between 1910-1992 separately for each country. This should provide a more realistic insight into earlier bird ringing activities and create a basis for further publication of national bird ringing reports. The article also studies the contribution of bird ringing as a method to the disciplinary development of ornithology in Croatia. Material and Methods: Separation of data oil bird ringing for the territory, of Croatia from the cumulative data collected between 1910 and 1992 was conducted on the sample of 25 species. The sources used were the original annual reports written by bird ringers and kept in the Bird ringing archive in the Institute of Ornithology, Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (CASA). They contain information oil bird species, location and elate of ringing. To assess the contribution of bird ringing as a method to the disciplinary development of ornithology in Croatia, we studied the data distribution and the Croatian share in the total bird ringing on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia, as well as the use of the bire ringing data and the reports oil ringed birds ill conference presentations and research articles published by 1992. Results and Conclusions: The separation of bird ringing data for 25 species (62,094 individual birds) shows that in former Yugoslavia the majority of bird ringing too place outside Croatia. Of the total of 47 reports on bird ringing and on recoveries on ringed birds published by 1992, 34 were used for writing 22 research articles and 16 conference presentations or abstracts. Throughout the history of bird ringing, the Institute of Ornithology, CASA, has remained the organizer of the activity and the custodian of the Bird ringing archive. The institute should now draw up an inventory of all data collected up to present time. Furthermore, the data should be digitalized and, as a Digital bird ringing database, made accessible to a wider ornithological audience. The year 2010 as the 100(th) anniversary of bird ringing offers an opportunity to highlight the role of Croatia in the development and organization of this activity, and to modernize data processing.