painted by Johanna Yourstone 2012

painted by Jenny Eikestam 2012

News

May 2, 2013 Swarovski ATX scope review So there it was, the 85mm ATX-scope, first deployed on our little hill near Sakhalvasho, Georgia. The attentive blog follower might have noticed the odd-looking scope in one of our first season posts. And it was used, a lot! As we watch the skies almost continuously, from dusk till dawn, in good and bad weather, for two months long, we had plenty of opportunities and conditions to test it in. As you might know, we had a lot of challenging raptors to identify. Below, we represent the main pro’s and con’s of this scope, inspired by the findings of our count coordinators and volunteers, who handled the scope.	May 1, 2013 Count Coordinators Wanted! BRC Friends,
Apr 27, 2013 Volunteers and visitors welcome in spring At the moment some projects are going on in Batumi: a waterbird survey in the Chorokhi delta, a limited spring raptor count and biodiversity surveys further inland. Dries, Brecht DM and Brecht V are on the spot, and you are welcome to join them till late June.	Apr 27, 2013 Rufford Foundation grant approved Dear BRC enthusiasts,
Apr 21, 2013 Call for researchers in Gibraltar Dear friends,	Mar 25, 2013 Threatened species photos needed Visual materials are an important asset for BRC to help convince grant-makers and sponsors to support our conservation work. We are currently looking into opportunities to improve the conservation of threatened species migrating through Georgia.
Mar 25, 2013 Raptor counter application open Application for raptor counters starts now!	Mar 11, 2013 Batumi Bird Festival report As we dind't want our BRC jubilee to pass unnoticed, we celebrate our fifth year with the first Batumi Bird Festival
Mar 5, 2013 Talk at Hacettepe University, Ankara On March 8, Brecht Verhelst will be giving a talk on the work of BRC at Hacettepe University, Ankara. All welcome at 16:00 in the Biology Department! http://www.facebook.com/events/485131358201616/	Feb 14, 2013 BRC at Belgische Vogeldag Next saturday, on february the 16th, BRC will be present with a talk and a stall on the 'Belgische Vogeldag'. Johannes will present an overview of 5 years of BRC and at our stall you can find out more about our project. When to go, how to visit our homestays or join as a volunteer next season.
Jan 31, 2013 "One million"-Tshirts now available NOW available: brand new "One Million"-edition of the BRC 2012 t-shirts.	Jan 26, 2013 BRC at Dutch Birding Day See you this saturday at Dutch Birding Day? BRC will be present with a talk and a stall. Wouter will present an overview of 5 years of BRC and at our stall you can find out more about our project.
Nov 30, 2012 Reporting on 2012 Education Activities In 2012 BRC implemented various education activities around environme	Nov 21, 2012 Invitation General Meeting Hello everybody we kindly invite all members to attend the BRC General Meeting 2012 which will take place in Ghent Belgium between between the 7th and 9th of December!
Nov 19, 2012 Thanks for latest gifts With a gift from Natuurpunt Vogelwerkgroep and many individual donations, including a major gift from Laurens Vogelaers, we have secured our budget until the end of 2012.	Nov 5, 2012 Thanks to all volunteers & staff Dear BRC-enthusiasts, Over the past two weeks you elected a new Board, which will soon start preparations for a splendid 2013 edition of BRC.
Oct 21, 2012 Board 2013 elections To all BRC members, it is high time to vote for next years BRC Board! The candidates for 2013 are: - for President: Johannes Jansen - for Secretary: Brecht Verhelst - for Treasurer: Jasper Wehrmann - for Board Member: Wouter Vansteelant	Oct 20, 2012 ONE Million raptors! After 5 years monitoring of raptors at the Batumi bottleneck, we have surpassed all expectations in autumn 2012. We tallied ONE Million migrating birds of prey passing our two count stations along the eastern Black Sea route.
Oct 10, 2012 Ringing in the botanical garden of Batumi Here is a short report on the ringing action of the English group that visited the BRC in 2012.	Oct 9, 2012 Support from Natuurmonumenten To cope with our rapid growth and increase in activities, we are constantly looking for additional funding opportunities.
Oct 9, 2012 BRC on Vroege Vogels During the festival, the Dutch journalist Roel Pauw visited our project.	Oct 4, 2012 The first 'Shikra' of BRC: hybrid or aberrant Levant? After we posted about the first Shikra record of BRC on September 16th, we received several comments about the identification of this challenging accipiter.
Oct 1, 2012 RuffordSG conference Armenia From 27th until the 30th of september, the Rufford small grants recipients conference was held in Tsaghkhadzor, Armenia. This conference brought together all beneficiaries of a Rufford grant from the Caucasus and wider region of the last years.	Sep 28, 2012 A day in the Chorokhi delta (c) Aki Aintil
Sep 16, 2012 Shikra: new species for BRC? Just after his arrival in Batumi, Brecht Verhelst discovered the first putative Shikra (Accipiter badius) ever for the BRC. At 10:36 on station 1 in Sakhalvasho one 2nd cy female accipiter flew overhead and gave a splendid view for several BRC counters.	Sep 12, 2012 Dark morph Marsh Harriers Since the start of the count we have seen a lot of Marsh Harriers. At least 16 of them were adult males of the rare dark morph. In former years only a handful of dark birds passed the stations. Little is known about this morph, e.g.
Sep 6, 2012 Record breaking season of BRC Few days ago on August 30th we were happy to report to you our all time record of 99,000 Honey Buzzards passing our observatories. With that BRC record set, the whole team was sure to have experienced the biggest peak of the season; and given the favorable flight conditions and steady migration over the last week, the last thing we were expecting was to set the mark even higher. But so we did … and how! With a day total of 179,342 Honey Buzzards ....	Sep 1, 2012 Record breaking migration at Batumi Our observations of two days ago on August 30th surpassed the expectations of even the most experienced counters currently working in Batumi. 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.
Aug 30, 2012 BRC at the ECCB	Aug 27, 2012 First nine days of raptor migration 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.

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