Found a ring on a game bird in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence? What to do

From photo to report

1. Open bagues.gibis.fr on your phone and photograph the ring close up, in good light.
2. Enter the municipality, Digne-les-Bains or any other in the department; no municipality is ever shown publicly.
3. If the bird carries a wing tag rather than a leg ring, say so at the same step, together with the species.
4. Send it. For 24 hours you can still remove or add a photo.

Open the report form Guide: I found a ring

From report to validation

Once sent, the report is kept; if you left an e-mail address, an acknowledgement follows. The ring number is then matched against known releases; if one took place in a department whose federation is registered, that federation validates the recovery. Without a match, the report stays on file for Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, unpublished, until a federation can validate it. No hunter, ACCA or municipality is ever named: only totals per department and points rounded to about 1 km.

The Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region and RingFollow

Besides Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region comprises Vaucluse, Hautes-Alpes, Alpes-Maritimes, Var and Bouches-du-Rhône. None of the six departments in the region has a federation tracking its rings on RingFollow at present (see the regional overview). The number of municipalities (198) is higher here than in any other department of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region.

One ring, one data point

Every recovery reported gives a date, a distance and a species. Added together, they give an operation's recovery rate and how far the birds disperse after release: enough to adjust future releases in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.

Recoveries and reports in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence

• So far, RingFollow has no validated recovery taken in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.
• The validation queue for Alpes-de-Haute-Provence is empty.
• Nationwide, RingFollow records 85 ringed releases (3,592 birds) and 16 validated recoveries, across 5 participating federations.

The department at a glance

The European CORINE Land Cover inventory (2018) puts forests and semi-natural areas at 79% of the area and agricultural areas at 19%. The rest is mostly artificial surfaces (1%). About 7,000 km², 198 municipalities and 168,054 inhabitants in 2022: those are the orders of magnitude. With the share of artificial surfaces at 1%, the department is in the bottom five of the 96 departments of metropolitan France. Its arrondissements are administered from Digne-les-Bains (prefecture), Barcelonnette, Castellane and Forcalquier.

Sources: INSEE (official geographic code 2025, 2022 population counts), OFB / EEA (CORINE Land Cover 2018), geo.api.gouv.fr (areas).

Breeding and restocking

RingFollow tracks rings; breeding, species and restocking are covered on gibis.fr: game birds for restocking and red-legged and grey partridges.

Across the borders

Five departments border it: Alpes-Maritimes to the east, Hautes-Alpes to the north, Drôme to the north-west, Var to the south and Vaucluse to the west. Beyond the regional boundary lies the region of Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes. Among its neighbours, the share of forests and semi-natural areas ranges from 39% (Vaucluse) to 86% (Alpes-Maritimes), against 79% here (CORINE Land Cover 2018). None of these neighbours tracks its rings on RingFollow; the nearest registered federation is in Isère, about 140 km to the north (centre to centre). Next come Haute-Loire (about 225 km) and Ain (about 235 km).

• Hautes-Alpes (05)
• Alpes-Maritimes (06)
• Drôme (26)
• Var (83)
• Vaucluse (84)

Registering a federation

Hunter or ACCA official in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence? You can raise it with your federation. All federations and their situation: Federations.