The earliest banding of wild birds for scientific research in Australia began in 1912 with the banding of short-tailed shearwaters and white-faced storm-petrels by the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union and the Bird Observers Club.
Following the Second World War some state-based programs of banding short-tailed shearwaters and waterfowl began.
From about 1949 the CSIRO began banding short-tailed shearwaters (muttonbirds) in Bass Strait.
This work, together with earlier banding of shearwaters, established that the birds migrate “in a long and regular cycle, spending the majority of their time in the northern Pacific and returning each year”, often to the same nesting burrow.
[1] The organised banding of birds on a national basis started in 1953 through the CSIRO Division of Wildlife Research, with the bat banding scheme beginning in 1960.