Helsinki Ringing Centre

The father of bird ringing in Finland was professor Johan Axel Palmén. He ordered 2,000 rings from Germany in 1912 and the first ring was fitted on a Great Tit in the city of Oulu on the second of February 1913. The Zoological museum at the University of Helsinki took responsibility of bird ringing in the 1920s. Nowadays the Finnish Bird Ringing Centre in part of the Finnish Museum of Natural History at the University of Helsinki and is physically situated in the same building where it was established in the 1920s.

By the end of 2021, some 12.9 million birds had been ringed in Finland, with annual ringing totals being approximately 250,000. The proportion of nestlings is relatively high, at around 40%. The total number of recoveries, resightings and recaptures is over 1,5 million. During the last 30 years, use of individual colour marks has greatly increased numbers of resightings of some species of gulls, Common Cranes and White-tailed Eagles.

Bird ringing in Finland relies solely on volunteers who invest a lot of time and money in ringing activities. Altogether around 750 ringers actively take part in various international and national ringing projects ( e.g. Constant Effort Site ringing and raptor monitoring) as well as ringing at bird observatories. The median age of the Finnish ringers is 54 years and the proportion of female ringers is gradually increasing, being now some 15%.