Ornithology Centre and Workshop for Bird Ring Production in Libeň

The ornithology centre and workshop for hand production of bird rings in a garage on the Libeň island in Prague was a place of frequent informal gatherings of naturalists in the 1940s and 1950s but also a place of training for aspiring ornithologists.

The phenomenon of bird migration has fascinated man since time immemorial. Different cultures have explained the seasonal disappearing and reappearing of birds in different ways, e.g. that birds survive the cold season by sleeping. At present it is the bird ringing that helps unveil the secret of migration. The origins of modern bird ringing where each bird gets a metal ring on his foot with a unique code and the address of the bird ringing centre (the National Museum in Prague in our case) date back to the end of 19th century in Europe. Although similar attempts were made in the Baroque period. The Danish natural scientist Hans Christian Cornelius Mortensen (1856─1921) was a pioneer of the modern bird ringing. He ringed over 5 thousand birds during his life. During the 20th century, bird ringing and other bird marking underwent a tumultuous development. Today, an ornithologist can ring this number of birds in a year, but a hundred years ago it was an unattainable record. 

On the Austrian-Hungarian empire territory bird ringing was pioneered by Kurt Loos, a forester from Liběchov, where he founded a bird-ringing centre called Lotus in 1914. The activities of the Prague Bird-Ringing Centre at the Nation Museum have been developing since 1934 and its prominent founders included Otto Kadlec.

In the early days of bird ringing, there was a problem with a shortage of rings. Otto Kadlec and his apprentices and helpers decided to solve the problem on their own. They established a manufacture at Maniny in the Prague`s Libeň where they met and made bird rings by the thousands in a garage. This garage became a place of informal meetings of naturalist amateur and professional alike and also young interested people many of whom went on to become important figures of Czech science. The most famous visitors included Miloslav Nevrlý, Vladislav Hájek sr., Jiří Formánek and František Balát. Visitors of the garage organised field trips and bird-trapping events. Today, the exact location of the bird-ringing workshop is unfortunately impossible to find, but according to witnesses, it could have stood at the place of today`s pub in the gardening allotment area.

Jaroslav CEPÁK, Petr KLVAŇA, Jaroslav ŠKOPEK, Libor SCHROEPFER, Miroslav JELÍNEK, David HOŘÁK, Jiří FORMÁNEK, Jan ZÁRYBNICKÝ: Atlas migrace ptáků České republiky a Slovenska. Aventinum: Praha, 2008, s. 27─29.

 

Miloslav NEVRLÝ: Moje ptačí roky. Vydala Česká společnost ortnithologická a Společnost spolupracovníků Kroužkovací stanice Národního muzea: Praha, 2017, s. 19─36.