Participate to our researches

You can participate to our researches by sending us your observations on alpine chough, red billed chough or alpine accentor. If you would like to participate more deeply into these research projects (e.g. monitoring of a wintering area), please contact us.

The red billed chough

Within the framework of our research on the ecological requirements of the Crave in the Alps, we would like to determine the status of the alpine Crave population (distribution and population size), as well as the type of habitats it needs for feeding during winter, in relation with the agricultural practices.
Few data are currently available on this species in the Alps. We are therefore in the process of building a database and monitoring specific zones. Since we are not being able to survey the whole Alps, we are interested to collect all observation you could make on this species in the Alps.

The alpine chough

Alpine cough, small black birds with red legs to which mountaineers are very familiar with, are studied in the northern Alps and in Corsica. For scientific purposes, birds have been marked using coloured leg bands permitting an individual identification of each bird.

The monitoring of the cough in the northern Alps since 1988 allowed us to unravel new features about the movements, social organisation and population dynamics of this species, which, despite being common and fascinating, has hardly been studied in the world so far.

The alpine accentor

For the same reasons as the alpine chough, alpine accentor have been marked with coloured leg bands in the Mont-Blanc massif (around the refuge "Couvercle) since summer 2000.

So if you see a marked bird, please send us the information on where and when. Even if you did not manage to see all the colours on the leg bands, this information will be very valuable for us.

All information to be sent to:
Anne Delestrade
CREA - 400 route du Tour - Montroc - 74400 Chamonix
anne@crea-chamonix.org - 04 50 54 03 30