Data access
The main objective of BeBirds is to participate in developing useful knowledge to the conservation of Nature and in particular of birds.
Offer access to data is therefore an important component of the program. In this context a geographic application is online. It allows everyone to visualize movements of birds ringed in Belgium as well as birds ringed abroad and recovered in Belgium. The resulting maps can be used freely if acknowledging the address of the site and the access date.
Basic data are also accessible for study and management. There are two categories of them: ringing data strictly speaking (39 fields) and recovery data that include ringing and recovery data of the same bird (60 fields). Among the ringing data, 13.000.000 records are computerized (December 2015). Data collected between the start of the ringing program in Belgium (1927) and the beginning of systematic computerization (1990) were the subject of point encodings. It is therefore considered that 10.000.000 more records are available on paper only. These data are meticulously stored by type and ring number and therefore also accessible. All recovery data are encoded which represent about 770.000 records concerning 51 countries. One category is an exception: some of the recovery data where ringer and finder are the same person are currently only available in paper format. To complete the recovery file, these data are subject to priority encoding when time and resources allow it.
Requests for accessing data should be sent here according to the ad hoc procedure (available in French and Dutch). The applicant is invited to describe in what context and with what(s) objective(s) he or she is submitting a request for access. It is particularly important to accurately describe the type of data (species, date, place, etc.) for which access is requested.
The request will be analyzed according to the applicant's profile, the purpose(s) of the request, the type of the data and the species concerned. A fee will be proposed for applications involving a commercial or a financial relationship.
Researchers or authorities who also wish access to recovery data for birds ringed in other European countries are invited to apply directly to EURING, the federation of European Ringing Centres. EURING hosts a particularly effective system avoiding multiplying requests to various Ringing Centres.
