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A swirling kettle of migrating Steppe Buzzards over the Batumi bottleneck

 

Count

This season we have counted

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A European Honey Buzzard in flight over the Batumi bottleneck
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Honey Buzzards
A Steppe Buzzard soaring above the count station
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Steppe Buzzards
A Black Kite gliding over the migration bottleneck
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Black Kites
A Booted Eagle in flight
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Booted Eagles
A Western Marsh Harrier quartering low over the fields
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Marsh Harriers
A Lesser Spotted Eagle soaring on a thermal
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Lesser Spotted Eagles
A Montagu's Harrier in flight
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Montagu's Harriers
A Pallid Harrier hunting over open ground
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Pallid Harriers

Daily totals

Our annual autumn count runs from August 12th until October 21st. During that period you can find our daily and season totals updated daily on Trektellen.org and below. These are our raw results, uncorrected for ‘double counts’: birds possibly counted from both stations. We distinguish raw and unprocessed data, with these double counts, from cleaned and processed data, without double counts.

Annual totals

Totals by species, 2011–2025

Every year since the autumn count of 2012 we have surpassed the million-bird threshold — except for 2024 — firmly placing Batumi amongst the world's biggest raptor migration bottlenecks. The tables below show the standardised, processed totals of all target species and their morphological groups, corrected for double counts and non-standardised counts outside the seasonal and daily count period. These totals are therefore always lower than the raw totals listed on Trektellen. A dash (–) means that species was not monitored in a standardised fashion that year.

Season raptor and non-raptor migration count totals by species and year, sortable by column
Buzzards
European Honey-buzzard 561,311 454,901 490,330 431,638 514,093 495,534 485,914 518,232 509,100 559,789 655,843 426,821 642,956 369,744
Steppe Buzzard 334,171 82,196 168,563 213,645 426,667 249,419 300,756 281,390 203,210 199,620 486,191 415,153 185,145 –
Common Buzzard 0 1 3 6 8 10 8 8 17 19 8 14 10 0
Crested Honey-buzzard 28 89 28 43 42 27 9 13 10 26 19 38 12 8
Long-legged Buzzard 221 55 31 20 81 49 – – – – – – – –
Rough-legged Buzzard 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0
Pernis sp. 1 3 14 0 2 2 8 2 2 0 5 11 0 0
Buzzard sp. 133 7 44 7 67 6,681 15,621 0 1,732 0 217 184 178 2,054
Kites
Black Kite 326,416 226,609 292,968 306,438 281,817 221,647 149,072 158,787 163,239 118,465 104,483 103,926 101,159 79,892
Red Kite 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Black-winged Kite 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Kite sp. 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Eagles
Lesser Spotted Eagle 4,996 3,754 4,194 2,804 4,340 3,559 4,272 4,685 3,719 4,086 2,380 3,588 4,206 5,665
Greater Spotted Eagle 566 482 349 329 728 344 426 331 273 397 227 196 155 204
Steppe Eagle 267 222 207 111 351 415 437 271 249 477 251 332 162 171
Eastern Imperial Eagle 43 12 12 23 125 37 62 44 29 33 46 37 11 37
Golden Eagle 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0
Booted Eagle 7,372 6,580 7,469 5,957 7,754 6,941 5,186 6,811 7,355 6,630 5,314 5,212 6,129 5,570
Short-toed Eagle 2,698 2,179 2,030 1,875 2,442 1,578 1,787 1,432 1,441 1,329 1,346 1,308 1,252 1,207
Osprey 164 172 182 118 149 140 129 119 143 135 102 146 79 121
White-tailed Eagle 14 9 9 6 11 4 5 4 7 7 4 3 4 1
Large eagle sp. 6,883 6,245 5,827 4,662 9,240 5,040 5,343 3,417 1,967 2,404 7,236 6,427 2,372 2,618
Harriers
Marsh Harrier 10,773 6,888 5,547 7,842 11,269 8,122 8,074 7,403 6,097 8,446 6,197 6,613 4,926 4,462
Montagu's Harrier 2,052 2,122 2,082 1,499 1,656 2,331 1,937 3,586 2,777 3,253 2,443 2,833 4,519 2,491
Pallid Harrier 431 403 328 198 492 366 517 1,711 363 747 794 712 779 356
Hen Harrier 18 16 1 8 119 33 41 34 6 29 41 16 18 6
Ringtail Harrier sp. 5,540 4,047 2,770 2,937 5,187 3,671 5,445 3,128 3,449 5,589 5,726 5,129 6,533 4,232
Harrier sp. 89 25 26 258 156 58 93 36 58 8 15 30 10 32
Vultures
Egyptian Vulture 25 10 19 15 38 21 17 19 28 27 19 36 24 40
Griffon Vulture 11 1 2 5 20 2 3 4 4 1 9 9 1 2
Black Vulture 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1
Bearded Vulture 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Falcons
Eleonora's Falcon 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 1 1
Lanner Falcon 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Saker Falcon 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 3 1 1 2
Peregrine Falcon 24 23 21 20 31 35 22 26 26 40 32 28 48 31
Large falcon sp. 2 0 1 0 0 0 8 1 1 6 1 5 11 14
Other raptors
Medium raptor sp. 119,259 34,696 37,716 45,616 52,098 37,686 92,104 36,231 45,299 53,303 32,123 160,557 14,722 9,774
Raptor sp. 0 10 137 7 0 12 428 277 3 0 0 0 0 0
Storks & other migrants
White Stork 772 677 655 1,313 530 284 577 410 459 199 1,422 416 442 571
Black Stork 2,379 2,178 1,961 1,888 1,844 1,482 1,750 1,416 1,200 1,249 1,462 1,437 1,262 968
Stork sp. 2 0 0 7 5 5 14 0 0 0 0 25 10 0
Eurasian Crane 82 0 57 40 0 208 165 100 26 212 114 42 21 4
Demoiselle Crane 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Great White Pelican 85 0 1 0 90 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0
Dalmatian Pelican 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 3 0 0
Roller 1,886 2,074 905 2,055 1,844 1,820 922 702 1,159 450 2,159 1,477 1,770 1,252
Turtle Dove 415 154 1,156 782 2,717 637 686 1,714 1,934 461 1,099 4,517 – –
Oriental Turtle Dove 4 5 5 3 10 6 – – – – – – – –
Common Woodpigeon 61 56 881 300 183 730 292 157 450 32 1,580 402 – –
Stock Dove 2,041 1,665 1,448 2,279 1,569 764 713 321 765 800 764 1,300 – –
Dove sp. 63 56 132 264 112 368 – – – – – – – –
Total raptors 1,383,512 831,761 1,020,910 1,026,089 1,318,987 1,043,767 1,077,725 1,028,006 950,605 964,871 1,311,077 1,139,366 975,424 488,737
Total non-raptors 7,790 6,865 7,201 8,931 8,904 6,304 5,119 4,820 5,995 3,405 8,600 9,619 3,505 2,795

Click a column header to sort. Scroll horizontally to see all years.

Where are the other species?

Over the years we have conducted several experimental counts and we have now settled on the target species in the tables above. For an overview of all the species we have recorded in the past 10 years, have a look at the raw Trektellen totals:

Where are the counts from 2008–2010?

Between 2008 and 2010 we conducted 3 pilot counts, which have guided the selection of target species for 2011 onwards. As this makes it hard to compare data from the period 2008–2010 and 2011 until now, we have decided not to show the pilot counts here. Use the Trektellen links above to browse through the results of these pilot counts.

How was this data collected and processed?

We have published a description of how count data were collected, managed, and processed for trend analyses in our data paper. Read the data paper in ZooKeys.