New publication: Opportunistic in-flight foraging behaviour of Black Kites during spring migration
The most recent autumn issue of the Sandgrouse, published by OSME, contains a short paper describing preliminary results of Black Kites obtained during the two BRC spring counts conducted so far. The results of the spring count show interesting in-flight foraging behaviour of Black Kites and describe their more numerous occurrence in spring compared to autumn. The paper is now available open access!
Black Kite with an interesting prey: a mole! Photo by Tohar Tal.
Abstract
In 2019 and 2020 the Batumi Raptor Count conducted two small-scale pilot counts to assess the importance of the flyway in spring. We present preliminary results for Black Kite Milvus migrans, showing that this species is more numerous in spring than in autumn and that it engages in in-flight foraging while passing through the Batumi bottleneck, a behaviour that has never been observed in twelve years of autumn counts. In-flight foraging appears to be largely opportunistic, occurring during only a short period of the Black Kite migration season and involving a minority of individuals. As such, in-flight foraging opportunities are unlikely to be the main cause of the greater spring aggregation of Black Kites in the eastern Black Sea flyway.
This year the third and final spring count will be conducted from the start of March till the end of May. Are you interested in participating? Don’t hesitate and send an email to spring@batumiraptorcount.org.
BRC Spring Count 2021 Cancelled
This year the third pilot spring count was supposed to be conducted. Sadly, after many considerations, we hereby announce that the count has officially been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last year, in 2020, we were lucky to already have a count team of five volunteers present in Georgia before all the travel restrictions came into effect. Eventually this team managed to complete the full count.
Up until recently, we had the same plan in mind for this year: conducting the last pilot spring count with a small team of counters. Unfortunately, as the COVID situation has not improved, the risks outweigh the benefits in this matter. Thus we put our hopes up for the next spring season in 2022 and the coming autumn!
Spring Report 2020 published
Black Kite with a mole. Photo by Tohar Tal.
Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has ground daily life to a halt for many of us, bird migration of course continued and so did our team of spring counters in Batumi. The 2nd official spring count reaffirms the unprecedented growth in Black Kite numbers, that few Honey Buzzards use the bottleneck on the way to their breeding grounds, and that Batumi is a fantastic place for spring birding.
Have fun reading!