here - The European Union for Bird Ringing

analyses, but do not carry the same importance as others. These include fields such as the catching
method or pullus age. Some schemes demand that ringers record and submit these data, others do
not. Where schemes do not record such items, records should be submitted with the appropriate
code for unknown or unrecorded (usually U, Z or a hyphen) rather than just leaving a blank character
space.
The fields which have been added in the 2000Plus code often do not have a value for unknown/
unrecorded; missing values are represented by two adjacent 'pipe' symbols.
3.9 Derived data
The EURING code provides three fields for derived data. These are for the distance moved, direction
travelled and time elapsed since ringing. For the ringing event, these fields must all contain hyphens,
not zeros. This provides one simple way of separating the ringing record from subsequent records.
Some schemes have found difficulty in calculating the distance and direction fields. These can be
calculated by the EDB when the data are loaded. In these cases they should be left as hyphens in the
recovery/recapture record. However, always calculate the elapsed time.
EURING exchange-code 2000 Enhanced 42 - 42