This page is for anyone who hunts in Morbihan and finds a ring on a pheasant or partridge: where to report it, who validates it, and what is known about the department. RingFollow never publishes the name of a hunter, an ACCA (approved communal hunting association) or a municipality, nor any count below 3. On the administrative map, department 56 belongs to the Brittany region; its prefecture is Vannes.
Ring tracking in Morbihan
For department 56, no federation uses RingFollow at present. Reporting remains possible and useful: the recovery is recorded, then reviewed by a federation; GIBIS plays no part in the validation. If the bird comes from a release in a department whose federation is registered, that federation validates the recovery; otherwise the report stays on file for Morbihan.
Reporting in four steps
- Open bagues.gibis.fr on your phone and photograph the ring close up, in good light.
- Choose the municipality where the bird was taken, from the 249 in Morbihan: it locates the recovery but is never published.
- If the bird carries a wing tag rather than a leg ring, say so at the same step, together with the species.
- Send: with no signal, the report goes out on its own as soon as coverage returns.
Morbihan and its neighbours
Its neighbours are Finistère to the north-west, Loire-Atlantique to the south-east, Côtes-d'Armor to the north and Ille-et-Vilaine to the east. Beyond the regional boundary lies the region of Pays de la Loire. Among its neighbours, the share of agricultural areas ranges from 77% (Finistère) to 84% (Ille-et-Vilaine), against 74% here (CORINE Land Cover 2018). No federation registered on RingFollow lies within 400 km; all of them are listed on the Federations page.
Recoveries and reports in Morbihan
- So far, RingFollow has no validated recovery taken in Morbihan.
- The validation queue for Morbihan is empty.
- For comparison, all of France: 3,592 ringed birds in 85 releases and 16 validated recoveries (5 participating federations); details on the Statistics page.
The department at a glance
Land cover in 2018 (CORINE Land Cover): agricultural areas lead with 74%, followed by forests and semi-natural areas (18%). The rest is shared between artificial surfaces (7%) and wetlands (1%). With 783,390 inhabitants (INSEE, 2022 population count) on about 6,880 km², the density is roughly 114 inhabitants per km²; the department has 249 municipalities. The share of agricultural areas (74%) is lower here than in any of its four neighbours. Its arrondissements are administered from Vannes (prefecture), Lorient and Pontivy.
Sources: INSEE (official geographic code 2025, 2022 population counts), OFB / EEA (CORINE Land Cover 2018), geo.api.gouv.fr (areas).
After you send it
Once sent, the report is kept; if you left an e-mail address, an acknowledgement follows. Next comes the matching: does the ring belong to a recorded release? If so, and if that department's federation is registered, it reviews the recovery. If no release matches, the report is kept under department 56 and stays out of the public totals. No hunter, ACCA or municipality is ever named: only totals per department and points rounded to about 1 km.
What a reported ring is for
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 Morbihan.
Within the Brittany region
The other departments of the region are Côtes-d'Armor, Finistère and Ille-et-Vilaine. None of the four departments in the region has a federation tracking its rings on RingFollow at present (see the regional overview). At 249, the number of municipalities here is the lowest among the four departments of the Brittany region.
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.
Frequently asked questions
Will my name appear on the Morbihan page?
No. Public pages only show totals per department, never a count below 3; no hunter, ACCA or municipality is ever named.
Who validates a recovery reported in Morbihan?
A hunters' federation: the one for the department where the bird was originally released, if it is registered on RingFollow. The Morbihan hunters' federation (FDC 56) does not use RingFollow at present, and GIBIS never validates.
Can I report a ring without a mobile signal in Morbihan?
Yes. The form keeps the report on the phone and sends it as soon as coverage returns, wherever you are in Morbihan.
Why are there no statistics for Morbihan?
A department's statistics are only published if its federation tracks its rings on RingFollow and at least 3 releases are recorded there. The Morbihan hunters' federation (FDC 56) does not use RingFollow at present.
Should a ring engraved with an address, found in Morbihan, be reported here?
No. RingFollow only covers game-farm rings, which carry no address. Rings from scientific ringing schemes are reported to those schemes; this site's guide tells you more.
Registering a federation
The situation of every federation is on the Federations page. A federation that would like to track its recoveries can write to gibis@gibis.fr.
To get an idea of a department page with its statistics, see the sample page (simulated data).