BRC at IBOC2019
We just returned home from the 3rd International Bird Observatory Conference (IBOC) in Eilat. It was a very successfull get together of people from bird observatories across the globe to share knowledge and experiences. As BRC we are very thankful to the organizers of the IBOC2019 for helping us with part of the funding needed to come to Eilat and for giving us considerable speaking time to present our work in Batumi. Besides topics as project management, count philosophy and data management and our recently submitted paper to IBIS about the relevance of ageing, we are very proud that one of our first Georgian counters, Aslan Bolkvadze, presented the problems of illegal hunting in the bottleneck.
Update May 9th, 2019: Videos and slides of the talks have now been made available. Scroll down to see them. Unfortunately there is no video of the talk by Dries Engelen.
During IBOC2019 the Caucasus region was represented by people from Georgia, Armenia, Germany, Estonia and The Netherlands: a unique moment and an excellent opportunity to discuss cooperation possibilities. Photo by Art Villem Adojaan.
Aslan Bolkvadze presenting the problem of illegal hunting in the bottleneck. Photo by Art Villem Adojaan.
Triin Kaasiku presenting our project, count philosophy and open access availability of our dataset. Photo by Art Villem Adojaan.
Dries Engelen presenting the team that was at the basis of 8 years of standardised counts. Photo by Art Villem Adojaan.
Videos & Slides
Batumi Raptor Count: our strategy for the monitoring and conservation of more than one million raptors in the eastern Black Sea flyway
Triin Kaasiku
Illegal killing of birds in the Batumi bottleneck
Aslan Bolkvadze
Accounting for differential migration strategies between age groups to monitor raptor population dynamics in the eastern Black Sea flyway
Dries Engelen
Other talks from the region
Besides presentations about BRC, we would also like to highlight the presentations from our friends from projects in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey.
The branch of German nature protection union in the Republic of Armenia: NABU-Armenia
Lusine Aghajanyan
Research on waders in Southern Azerbaijan, one of the last under-surveyed areas of the Western Palearctic
Christoph Himmel
The development of the Besh Barmag Bird Migration Count in Azerbaijan and its importance for the monitoring of Eurasian migrant birds
Michael Heiss
Establishing raptor migration monitoring at Sarimazi (Turkey) to assess Egyptian Vulture population trends
Steffen Oppel
New publication: Egyptian Nightjar at the Chorokhi delta, Georgia and status in Europe
Egyptian Nightjar. Photo by Simon Cavaillès.
In August 2017 a BRC team (Jonas Schärer, Xu Shi and Jaime Escobar) observed an Egyptian Nightjar in the Chorokhi Delta which turned out to be the first national record. An article written by Jonas Schärer and Simon Cavaillès has just been released in Dutch Birding. They detail the Chorokhi observation and summarize all European observations of this nightjar species outside its breeding range.
Pioneering pilot spring count in Batumi 2019
Spring migration in Batumi? We would love to show you what that looks like, but we don’t really know. All we know for certain is that birds will be going in the opposite direction, somewhat like in the video below. But how many? And when? No idea.
During the last 11 years we have collected an immense amount of data about autumn migration in the Batumi bottleneck, but what happens in spring remains largely unknown. This is the knowledge gap we intend to fill in spring 2019.
If pioneering a pilot spring count would be something you would like to do, please contact us via volunteer@batumiraptorcount.org and we will get back to you with more detailed information.
PS. As this is a pilot count, there will be much fewer people on the station with no official team of coordinators present. Hence, each counter has more responsibilities and should preferably (though not necessarily) have previous experience with (raptor) migration counts. Contrary to our autumn counts, there is no strict minimum or maximum number of days you can join us.
EDIT April 6th, 2019: The spring count is fully underway. We are still in need of volunteers (especially from halfway April onwards). If you just want to see the season totals, have a look at our live migration count data.
EDIT April 14th, 2019: The first spring count update has been published. We are still — urgently — looking for volunteers to cover the period from halfway April onwards, during which we expect thousands of Montagu’s Harriers and hundreds of thousands of Honey Buzzards.