Ottenby Bird Observatory
bird observatory in Öland, Sweden
Ottenby Bird Observatory (Swedish: Ottenby fågelstation) is a bird observatory in Ottenby, on the southern tip of the Swedish island Öland in the Baltic Sea. The area's ornithological importance has been recognised for a long time, and a permanent bird observatory was set up in 1946. Bird ringing has been carried out since the start and in a standardised way since 1972. Datasets from Ottenby have been used to assess long-term changes to migratory patterns, morphometrics and population trends for several species of birds, in particular waders.
History
The area's ornithological importance has been recognised for a long time. Carl Linnaeus visited it in 1741. The first methodological observations on birds were made in Ottenby by Friedrich Wilhelm Meves during the 19th century. It became an established locale for ornithological research following pioneering work on wader migration done in Ottenby by Gustaf Kolthoff and published in 1897.
In the late summer of 1937, ornithologists Gunnar Svärdson and Ulf Bergström spent several weeks at Ottenby, initially with the aim of studying waders. They were housed in the auxiliary buildings of the lighthouse Långe Jan and rigged several traps to catch migratory birds.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ottenby Bird Observatory” as bird observatory in Öland, Sweden. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the science & nature register because the source frames it as bird observatory in Öland, Sweden. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Stable identifiers, scientific names and standards terminology offer the best bridge between this overview and specialist evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q586846. VIAF identifies the subject as 143177456. The Library of Congress control number is n88189289. Authority coordinates are 56.198, 16.399. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1946, 1972, 1741 and 1897.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ottenby Bird Observatory” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.