Bird Monitoring - Colour Ringing
Colour ringing projects significantly enhance the amount of data obtained for a project and on a specific bird, and is reliant on observations by those running the project, but is greatly enhanced by observations from members of the public, birders and photographers.
Colour ringing projects are run on various species, but those birds seen in the UK are in virtually ever case European based projects.
Projects can use various different methods of uniquely marking the bird.
Combination of leg colour rings.
Uniquely coded leg ring or flag.
Uniquely coded leg ring or flag, with a combination of colour rings.
Uniquely coded wing tag.
Uniquely coded neck band.
Uniquely coded nasal saddle (not fitted within the UK).
If you see a colour ringed bird it is usually best to contact the person running the project, and to find out who they are you can use the European Colour Ringing website. Where there are a lot of projects on a species, it can take a bit of digging to find the right one. Another source if you cannot find it on that website is the International Wader Study Group register, but it is a bit less user friendly.
If you are having trouble finding a project you can ask for help on Colour ring birding on Facebook.
Finally you can always report it via the Euring website.