Visit the Batumi Raptor Count 2012 (1 Viewer)

Dear birders,

who's interested in witnessing the incredible autumn bottleneck migration of thousands birds of prey at the Caucasus in Georgia ?

In autumn 2011 loads of raptors passed the bottleneck at the Black Sea coast. Counting two months from 2 stations we saw about:
450.000 Honey-buzzard
75.000 Black Kite
6.000 Booted Eagle
5500 Lesser Spotted Eagle
350 Pallid Harriers
200 Greater Spotted Eagle
40 Egyptian Vulture
30 Imperial Eagle
8 Crested Honey-buzzard

and a lot of bee-eaters as well as storks, egrets, rollers ...

For more details on raptor migration read:
http://www.batumiraptorcount.org/Verhelst_etal_2011_Ardea.pdf

We offer three opportunities to participate in our project:
1) Help us during the count as a COUNTER.
In return for a small daily incentive (6-8 eur) you can join for at least 2 weeks in our counts (2 off-days) and we provide you with accommodation, local transportation and food. We expect some basic English skills to communicate between the coordinators and the counters.
http://www.batumiraptorcount.org/projects/raptor-count/batumi-raptor-count-2012

2) Support us as a ECO-TOURIST
http://www.batumiraptorcount.org/projects/ecotourism

3) Attend our Batumi Bird FESTIVAL, and celebrate 5 years of BRC with us! The event is organised during the most varied migration period, from 20th until 23rd of september. We provide daily excursions to all birding hotspots, cultural tours, lectures, banket and traditional music.
http://www.batumiraptorcount.org/bird-festival

All further information can be found on our website.

http://www.batumiraptorcount.org

Best regards
BRC Team
[email protected]
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Any advice on flights, at least nearest main airport?

Who flys to Batumi?

The most convenient is to fly to Batumi airport. That's less than half an hour drive from the site. Turkish airlines offers daily flights from Istanbul.
If you want to fly low cost, you can choose to fly to Trabzon (turkey) with Pegasus airlines and continue by bus. The ride Trabzon to Batumi takes 4-5 hours, depending on the time spent at the border crossing.
Another low cost option is to fly to Tbilisi (with Pegasus airlines via Istanbul or AirBaltic via Riga). The (night)train takes you quite comfortable from there to Batumi (6-7h) or take a minibus (5h).

We have added a page on our website on how to get there.
Allmost all places for volunteering are full btw,
but we still welcome visitors during the entire autumn season.

And to celebrate our 5th anniversary, we are organising the first ever package tours we offer.
All revenue goes directly to the conservation of this nature spectacle!

Hope to see you this autumn in Batumi!

Thank for the very interesting information.

I've always wanted to go to follow the migration in East Europe. Are you in Turkey or in Georgia?

thanks, Carles Oliver

The bottleneck is on the Eastern Black-sea flyway, a true crossroad for raptors migrating from (north-) eastern europe and west-asia to north- and east-africa.

Our three watchsites are located in South-West Georgia, the Ajara province. That's just north of the border with Turkey and part of 'our' birds also cross near Borcka in Turkey, a watchsite that might be better known.
You can visualise it by having a look at this googlemap.

Don't hesitate to attend our first ever Batumi Bird FESTIVAL, and celebrate 5 years of BRC with us!

the count kicked off several days ago, and on the first, very rainy day,
the observers were surprised by a juvenile Pallid harrier up close.
Hopefully the sign for a high pallid count this year, as the species appeared to be in steep decline in numbers since the start of the monitoring.

The first 5 days were good for warming up, with 3.000 raptors so far.
The majority Honey buzzards, a nice flock of white storks
and excellent migration of rollers.
You can follow the count results, updated regularly, on our website:
http://www.batumiraptorcount.org/projects/raptor-count/latest-count

Would love to get to this one year, now i am aware of it. Getting there is quite difficult but not insurmountable.
Be interested to read updates...............keep em coming.

from the Report by count coordinator Arthur Green:

After just nine days since the count started on 17 August, we already bear witness to an astonishing migration from our count stations just outside the In total 130,446 individuals of 18 migratory raptor species has been systematically recorded from our count stations in Sakhalvasho and Shuamta. Most prominent are the Honey Buzzard; from our experience previous years we expect the peak movement of adult Honey Buzzard any day now. Past season totals have exceeded 370,000, an astonishing figure in the western Palearctic by any measure! Black Kite and Booted Eagle are also found mixing with our flocks of Honey Buzzard in increasing numbers, standing at 1348 and 200 individuals respectively. Other notable movements include harrier species, with 237 Western Marsh Harrier, 319 Montagu's Harrier, and the first trickle of juvenile Pallid harriers.

Our station in Shuamta observed an Egyptian Vulture on 22 and 24 of August, and a juvenile Steppe Eagle on both 24 and 26 of August. 3 Lesser Spotted Eagles have also passed, a sure sign of the migration to come in a few weeks time. Our station in Sakhalvasho observed a White-tailed Eagle on 23 August, and made a stunning observation of a Peregrine Falcon attacking a flock of Glossy Ibis on 22 August, successfully plucking a single individual from the flock in flight.

On their days off from station, many counters opted to visit the beautiful Chorokhi Delta and reported very good sightings.
But migration has only just started. How well will we do this year? And what will we see? Stay tuned! Watch our almost daily updated numbers on trektellen database.

For more recent pictures, have a look on our webpage

Last thursday the volunteers in Batumi had a historical day.

As Wouter reports on the blog:
After one day of continuous hard rain on the 29th, where hardly a migrating bird could be spotted, a record-breaking number of 99,038 Honey Buzzards out of 102,293 raptors appeared out of nowhere above our observatories; an astounding number by any measure. The count was even more astonishing as in the week preceding the rain event we had already observed Honey Buzzard migration exceeding 150,000 birds. It is hard to put to words the awe that overcomes you when confronted with such a tsunami of birds. Quite frankly, one should just be here to have any sense of what such numbers really mean. It is magical to feel excitement build among the observers with the ever increasing numbers collecting in vast kettles over the Kobuleti plains to the north … Huge towers of raptors, growing up to several 1000's of birds strong and several 100's of meters in height. And when finally the never-ending stream of birds arrives overhead, and when you hear the tally counters clicking like mad and see your fellow observers laughing -nearly hysterically- with hardly any time to eat, that's when you know what the Batumi craze is all about. As far as natural spectacles go, the migration in Batumi must be one of the most thrilling in the world.

We should not forget to mention the other beautiful travelers we enjoyed observing that day. Because accompanying the astonishing horde of Honey Buzzards, there were also 1,390 Montagu's and Pallid Harriers, 180 Marsh Harriers, 51 Booted Eagles no less than 335 Rollers and a sky full of non-counted birds including Turtle Doves, Bee-eaters, Golden Orioles and so on. With 881 Black Kites on the 30th we can also say that the migration of this species has now started for the season, and as if all of this is not enough we were still counting over 30,000 Honey Buzzards on the 31st and significant numbers of Pallid Harriers on which we will be reporting later. Because at this very moment (2PM on Sept 1st) this author is seeing a flock of 20 Montagu's Harriers and a few hundred Honey Buzzards approaching … Back to count! Stay tuned for more news during the coming weeks and months. Batumi migration is as always full of surprises and causing much excitement … and we don't expect that to change anytime soon.

Some pictures from Albert de Jong attached.
Read the blog post for more insight and see some more pictures:
http://www.batumiraptorcount.org/blog/record-breaking-migration-batumi

Sounds incredible! Wow. Whetted the appetite still further.

Awesome stuff!! - I've got to check this place out ASAPB

From our facebook-page:

The world record day total for autumn migration of Honey-buzzard was set yesterday at BRC with 165,080 individuals bringing our annual total to 478,186 individuals!

In the wake of the enormous peak of yesterday there are still many thousands of birds coming today, including already 2 CRESTED HONEY BUZZARDS today, 1 over each observatory respectively!

Stay tuned! ;-)