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Flyway Monitoring Trainees of 2026
Meet the three 2026 Flyway Monitoring Trainees joining Batumi Raptor Count through the OSME Youth Development Fund.
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Tohar Tal
10 posts
At BRC:
- Fundraising
Tohar first counted at Batumi in 2018 and joined the team two years later. He has been instrumental in running our first official full season spring counts from 2019. As Co-Chair, he steers the organisation, leads our conservation and partnership work, and supports the fundraising and strategic planning that keeps each season's count on its feet.
Read more about Tohar on our team page 
Events
‘Fight for Flight’
During our 2023 Autumn count, Heather Fortune volunteered with us. "Fight for Flight" is the title of her year-long solo expedition, contributing to ornithological research and conservation across Europe and Asia.
Fundraising
Fundraiser for 2025
For sixteen years the BRC has conducted high-quality raptor migration counts. This long-term monitoring is critical to understand how bird populations are doing in our rapidly changing world.
Organisation
Collaboration in the East African-Eurasian Flyway
This year, the BRC had the honor of hosting three counters, Can Yeniyurt, Kadri Kaya, and Cemil Cezgin, from the brand-new Bosphorus bird migration count sites in Turkey.
Get Involved
Count Coordinators for Autumn 2024
With the funding for 2024 complete, we have started preparations for the count! The count will run from the 12th of August until the 21st of October.
Fundraising
Mission accomplished: funding for the 2024 count is complete!
Since 2021 we’ve been constantly running crowdfunding campaigns to be able to fund our autumn counts, much-needed equipment, and other practical aspects of our monitoring and conservation efforts.
Fundraising
Fundraiser for 2023
For thirteen years the BRC has conducted high quality raptor migration counts. This long-term monitoring is critical to understand how bird populations are doing in our rapidly changing world.
Get Involved
Volunteers Wanted: Spring Count 2022
In 2019 and 2020 we carried out the first and second spring pilot counts in the Batumi bottleneck, revealing a very different composition of raptor migration compared to autumn. We're looking for volunteers to join us for the third and final spring count in 2022.
Reports & Research
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.
Organisation
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.