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The Aranzadi Society of Sciences is a nonprofit scientific association, whose main goal is the scientific research on the natural and human environment and to spread the results obtained.
Established in 1947, the curiosity and thirst for knowledge of its first members diversified over the years, and this led to a series of departments currently grouped into three main categories: Human and Social Sciences (Physical Anthropology, Archaeology and Ethnography), Natural Sciences (Botany, Entomology, Herpetology, Mastozoology, Mycology and Ornithology) and Earth and Space Sciences (Astronomy, Speleology, Geodesy and Geology).
Aranzadi was declared of Public Utility in 2001, when it was set up as a Research and Study Centre, becoming a reference point in the scientific world. For this reason was included in the Basque Network of Science, Technology and Innovation as a sectorial centre.
Ornithology at Aranzadi
This department began to work in 1949, when the association created a Scientific Ringing Scheme that supplied its own rings with the refer "Aranzadi-San Sebastian".
This Ringing Scheme was the first of its kind in the Iberian Peninsula, and led the first ringing campaigns carried out in the Basque Country and beyond its borders (Doñana, the Ebro Delta, etc). These campaigns evolved into preliminary studies on birds, which were a starting point for the creation of protected areas. The scheme recorded the very first data on transoceanic birds travelling from the Iberian Peninsula to far-away places such as Brazil, Surinam, Martinique and the Lesser Antilles.
After those initial steps, the work was focused on deepening the knowledge of certain areas and species of special interest, or groups of species with a specific characteristic. Over the years, Aranzadi Ringing Scheme gradually improved its working methods to adopt a more scientific, serious and rigorous approach, and later started to use the new technologies as these has been developed.
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