Systematic bird ringing in Hungary started in 1908 by the Hungarian Royal Ornithological Centre (later: Ornithological Institute) (by Ottó Herman and Jakab Schenk).
The building of the institute was destroyed during World War 2 in 1945 including the complete collection and bird ringing documentation. Only the data published in the Aquila journal remained from the time before 1951: the data of 2,193 bird individuals, which are integrated to the EURING databank (EURING scheme codes: HGK, HGM, HGX).

Bird ringing started in Greece in the 1960s using rings issued outside Greece, and mainly involved stork chicks being fitted with Radolfzell rings. The Greek bird ringing scheme started in 1985, first as a group of bird ringers within the Hellenic Ornithological Society and from 1989 onwards as an independent organisation, the Hellenic Bird Ringing Centre. In 2022 there are about 60 active bird ringers, including about 10 fully qualified, about 10 advanced trainees and about 40 with special permits for specific species.

The history of the Hiddensee Bird Ringing Scheme goes back to the year 1936, when the Ornithological Station Hiddensee (“Vogelwarte Hiddensee”) was formally established on the island Hiddensee as a section of the Biological Research Station of the University of Greifswald. However, bird ringing started before this. For example, a comprehensive cormorant ringing programme was launched in 1930, which provided more than 170 recoveries – the only ringing data for the species in the Baltic Sea area from a time when the species was almost on the verge of extinction.

The birds marking itself has been traditionally in the main on volunteers base since beginning. We thank all the numerous ringers and helper in the last 110 years and nowadays who spent a lot of time and money for the scheme. Since 1946 the scheme was financed by the federal state of Lower Saxony as part of the Ministry for Science and Culture although the scheme is responsible for the bird marking in six federal states.

Based at Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (link: https://www.mnhn.fr/en), the French Bird Ringing Scheme (Centre de Recherches sur la Biologie des Populations d'Oiseaux, link: https://crbpo.mnhn.fr/) has been operating since the 1930's. The scheme mainly contributed to the Atlas with data from France, but also from Northern and Western Africa. All available ringing data documenting bird movements have now been digitalized.

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.

Scientific bird ringing started in Sweden in 1911 organised by the Natural History Museum in Gothenburg. Two years later, in 1913, bird ringing was started by the Swedish Museum of Natural History. Several other organisations, including the Swedish Ornithological Society and the Swedish Hunting Association started to organise their own ringing activities a short time later. By the late 1950’s it became increasingly evident that it would be best if the ringing activity in Sweden could be centralised.

Zagreb ringing scheme covers all scientific bird ringing in Croatia. It is organised and coordinated from the Institute of Ornithology in Zagreb (Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts). The ringing scheme was founded in 1910 by Dr Ervin Rössler, who was inspired by ornithological centres in Rossiten (1903) and Budapest (1908). From its foundation to the end of WWI, the Zagreb ringing centre organised ringing only in Croatia. After WWI and the formation of Yugoslavia, coordination of ringing was expanded to the whole Yugoslavia except for Slovenia.