Many of you will be familiar with our winter crowdfunding ritual. This year our small team fell quiet at the worst possible time, but a remarkable act of generosity ensured the Autumn 2026 count can go ahead.
The third and final spring count gave us beautiful snow-covered surroundings and raptors in perfect light, we witnessed the return of birds and spring.
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 12th season brought unprecedented numbers of Black Kites, a new raptor species for the BRC counts, and marked the start of an education project in collaboration with local teachers.
The 12th edition of the Batumi Raptor Count started differently than previous years, with a brand-new observation platform at Station 1 and an earlier start date. Read on for the season's highlights, from record-breaking rollers to a stunning dark morph Marsh Harrier.
After 11 years of autumn counts it was time for something completely different. This spring a group of 13 enthusiastic counters monitored the Batumi spring migration from March 21st until May 31st.
Where to start? Well, let's start with the beginning of the day: unlike in autumn, where you are woken up by just the sound of the local rooster calling, in spring he's joined by a choir of feathered friends.
The freshly published BRC Autumn Report 2018 features season highlights, phenological peculiarities and general overview with many photos of both birds and people.
Our 10th Autumn count kicked off at 17th August, with the coordination team and first volunteers arriving to our headquarters in Sakhalvasho a few days before.
Autumn report 2016 is ready
The 9th season of Batumi Raptor Count has reached the halfway point! Once again we're witnessing a rush of raptor migration, growing enthusiasm for raptor identification, and no shortage of surprises.
BRC continued its monitoring work with another successful season studying the raptor migration in the Batumi bottleneck. In autumn 2015 we managed to count a total of 1.029.478 raptors without double counts!