Autumn Report 2021

by Erik Jansen

The 13th Batumi Raptor Count started exactly one year later than originally planned, on August 12th, 2021 instead of 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic unfortunately made counting in autumn 2020 very challenging and irresponsible, so we decided to cancel the count for the first time since the project’s start in 2008. One can imagine that the anticipation for the 2021 Autumn Count was greater than ever! August 12th, 2021 – here we go!

We started off with a team of 8 volunteer coordinators/counters who would end up staying until the bitter end on October 21st. Throughout the season they would be joined by ‘just’ another 27 volunteers from 12 different countries, making this season’s team one of our smallest ever. This was one of the many ways in which the ongoing pandemic affected the count this year. The first couple of days were very cold for Batumi standards, with temperatures not even reaching 20°C midday. Fortunately, they were also rather slow. This is a good thing, as it means we started the count on time and probably did not miss many birds before our team was present. Besides, it also gave our volunteers the opportunity to gradually get (back) into the game. Even for our more experienced counters, the first handfuls of raptors can be a challenge, but especially for first-time volunteers it is perfect to start slowly instead of being overwhelmed by thousands of raptors from the very beginning. Fewer birds means more time to study them closely, which in the end will pay off when their numbers really start to grow.

While the numbers were relatively low, we were already being entertained by good views of the first Long-legged Buzzard and Egyptian Vulture, and numbers of Marsh Harriers were already good. Furthermore, steady migration of Common Swifts, nice views of Lesser Grey Shrikes and a juvenile Black-headed Bunting on and around the stations provided ample entertainment throughout the first couple days of counting!

On August 16th, five days into the count, we witnessed the first proper stream of the season: 21 Honey Buzzards streamed south close to station 1’s counters. Their great enthusiasm did not quite match the – still small – number of birds in the stream, but seeing the first Batumi stream in almost two years did ignite a fire in the returnee-counters’ bodies! For some, the first streams of Honey Buzzards were the first significant streams of raptors they had ever seen — little did they know about the migration spectacle that was yet to come.

Among the highlights of the first week were already two Short-toed Eagles popping up right from behind station 1. These beauties announced themselves by calling to and circling around each other for a few minutes — something none of us had ever experienced before in Batumi! The first week was also used to chop down some of the trees around the stations. After a year of absence, some trees had grown so tall in Batumi’s humid and warm climate that our team had almost no visibility down into the valleys. While the big bulk of raptors migrate higher in the sky, some species are notorious for sneaking low through the valleys – we’re looking at you, Booted Eagles!

While the number of birds, as well as their variety, was gradually ramping up, bad fate struck our small team on August 20th: one of the coordinators self-tested positive for COVID-19 after feeling a little sick for a day. Our little bubble proved to be less virus-proof than we had hoped for. Fortunately that coordinator was able to quarantine before any of the other volunteers or host family members tested positive. We were, however, left with one less coordinator in an already small team. In addition, we had sent out a warning to our volunteers at home who were scheduled to join us regarding the COVID situation, and understandably some of them decided to cancel. There were serious doubts about the continuation of the current season in general, but after deliberation and the implementation of a set of anti-COVID measures, everybody anonymously and unanimously voted to continue the count. We realized that every single member within the team would now have to work extra hard to make this season a success, but we were ready to do what needed to be done. Honey Buzzards, bring it on!

Some highlights during the still relatively slow days included a flock of 28 Black-winged Stilts migrating south far in the east, significant numbers of Black-crowned Night Herons, and a Tawny Owl napping in a tree next to station 1. We also found two species of snakes on station 2, which is known to be good for finding reptiles – a Smooth Snake and the endangered Caucasian Viper. These snakes would be seen on and off throughout the season.

With just a handful of 1000+ bird days, and the biggest day so far sending ‘only’ 3947 birds past our stations, August 25th arrived with a bang: 37 322 birds were pushed through the bottleneck, of which 34 468 Honey Buzzards. Our team still just numbered 10 that day. A day later, with the addition of 1 extra volunteer, we counted another 44 794 raptors! That is a lot of raptors per person! During these days, HBs made up a solid 90% of all protocol species, but numbers of Harriers were also staggering with over 1000 Harriers (Marsh, Montagu’s, some Pallid Harriers, and many unidentified) in just two hours on the 26th.

We would end up counting 524 351 Honey Buzzards throughout the season, with an astonishing peak day of 123 840 HBs on September 4th. Two days of intense rain (on September 2nd and 3rd) right on the Honey Buzzard peak contributed to this second-best day ever for this species since the start of the project in 2008. When weather conditions are so unfavorable for migration, most birds rather rest than waste energy on trying to plow through a wet and windy bottleneck. That is almost definitely what happened when the birds stumbled upon a front of bad weather north of Batumi – they paused their journey south for one or two days. On September 4th, right after the weather cleared up, their numbers exploded as if a sink stopper was pulled from the sink! What a great day this proved to be, with station 1 having counted nearly 100 000 birds already by noon!

In the meantime, numbers of Black Kites had also started to rise. Anticipation for this species was high, since their numbers had been increasing rapidly over the last years. Since there was no count in 2020, our last autumn data was from 2019 when we counted just over 220 000 Black Kites. Our 2020 spring count team, though, had counted over 280 000 of these raptors. So naturally we wondered if we would count as many as during that spring, or if we would even break the 300 000 barrier this year. In contrast with the Honey Buzzards, who have a very short migration period, Black Kites migrate in relatively high numbers throughout the entire season and their peak is much flatter. Therefore, we had to wait until quite late in the season to realize that we would count a record-breaking number of Black Kites. September 9th, 15th and 19th would end up being the best three days ever for this species in autumn. By the end of the season, we had counted no less than 310 269 Black Kites! Up until 2014 we counted 100 000 of these raptors every season – it sounds unbelievable that we are now counting over three times that number. One can only guess where this will end!

Toward the end of August, species diversity is usually still quite low, but we started to see the first signs of September, with, for example, numbers of Turtle Doves and Rollers slowly increasing. Massive flocks of swallows would blacken our views, and the first Crested Honey Buzzard of the season was discovered on August 29th. More individuals of this large Honey Buzzard species were positively identified within early September’s massive streams of European Honey Buzzards. Though quite different from their European counterparts, they are notoriously difficult to pick out. Thankfully, we had an experienced team that was able to find a total of 45 Crested Honey Buzzards this season.

After the massive Honey Buzzard peak, we passed the half a million raptors milestone on September 7th. Surprisingly, by then we had only counted 50 000 Black Kites and just a handful of Steppe Buzzards, the main bulk species besides Honey Buzzards. Had the Black Kites stopped their annual increase? Or… if there was still A LOT to come, should we be preparing for an insane season??

Then came September 8th. Wow! What an unforgettable day this was, in particular for the crew on station 1. A record-breaking 1597 Marsh Harriers on a single day with kettles of dozens of Marsh harriers hanging around station! Besides these Marshes, we counted another 1358 ‘MonPalHen’ ringtail harriers (i.e Montagu’s/Pallid/Hen), witnessed this season’s first Oriental Turtle Dove and counted 398 Rollers. On top of that, 90 Great White Pelicans — that we first mistook for a large white ship on the sea — came floating towards the transect line! In 2015, we counted 2 individuals of this species, but beyond that there had been no records of this species in the bottleneck. Oh, and we also counted a combined total of around 50 000 Honey Buzzards and Black kites… With just 7 people. A perfect day!

Just one day later on the same station: the highest number (29878) of Black Kites ever counted on one autumn day! The best day ever for Booted Eagles (936)! The second-best day ever for Rollers (457)! Over 500 Turtle Doves, among which 2 Oriental Turtle Doves barely made it to the Trektellen comments. In the meantime, the Honey Buzzards just kept coming, and together with the Black Kites kept adding big numbers toward the one million mark. The combination of these huge numbers and nice species variety provided our team with some extremely enjoyable counting days – perfect for the team spirit, especially since our team still consisted of only 14 counters during those hectic days!

One of the species that regularly showed up during the second week of September was Oriental Turtle Dove. We started monitoring this species in 2019 as we suspected that these birds migrated through the bottleneck in higher numbers than we realized. We ended up counting 6 individuals that season. Oriental Turtle Doves stand out in flocks of European Turtle Doves, with no distinguishable size differences between individuals, mostly because of their (around 30 %) bigger size and their darker impression. This season we ended up counting 11 Oriental Turtle Doves. We were even lucky enough to have one individual perch in a tree right in front of us!

The second week of September is also the period when Honey Buzzards usually stop being the dominant species, as their numbers decline and numbers of Black Kites’ start to get really significant. The first proper streams of Steppe Buzzards also start showing up. The combination of these three ‘bulk species’ passing by our counting stations at once is an immense challenge for our team, as homogeneous streams are much easier to count than streams that consist of all three species in high numbers. Thankfully, Black Kites tend to fly relatively close to the coast (and tend to be counted by station 1 in Sakhalvasho), whereas Steppe buzzards tend to fly more inland (and are hence counted by station 2 in Shuamta).

September 14th was a dark day… In a good way! Besides the relatively common dark morph Marsh Harriers, we also recorded a dark morph Crested Honey Buzzard and BRC’s fifth Cinereous Vulture. The real highlight of the day, however, was a dark morph Montagu’s Harrier! This color morph is extremely rare in Batumi. Although we recorded this morph a handful of times before, this was the first time we managed to photograph this stunning plumage as well.

Total numbers of raptors are comparatively low mid-September. The Honey Buzzards have peaked, but the Steppe Buzzards are not yet at their peak. Instead, the Black Kites peak now, but their migration period is much longer and their peak flatter.  The species variety, though, tends to get really nice and interesting, with species like Crested Honey Buzzard showing up frequently in streams of their European counterparts. On September 15th we counted a total of 10 Crested Honey Buzzards, the second-best day ever for this charismatic species.

Contrary to most other species, Montagu’s Harriers showed up in disappointingly low numbers this year. Their peak usually lies around the beginning of September, so by mid-September one can make an educated estimate of how well the species has done that season. This year, the outcome was unfortunately not good, though in line with the negative long-term trend shown by this beautiful species. This season we counted a record-low of only 1741 Montagu’s harriers. Although a significant number of unidentified ringtail harriers (we counted 5748) will have been Montagu’s harriers, it will unfortunately still have been a relatively bad year for this species.

The end of September proved to be relatively slow, with quite some days of rain or otherwise unfavorable migration conditions. Though more slowly than expected, we did creep closer to counting our one millionth bird. As usual, the bad weather days were good for migration of falcons, with streams of hundreds of Hobbies, Common and Lesser Kestrels and Red-footed Falcons on some days. One of the reasons we do not count these birds (small falcons) is exactly because of this weather-dependent behavior, but that doesn’t stop us from enjoying them as they bullet through the bottleneck.

After a period of relatively slow migration, we were once again met by some mesmerising days starting on September 26th. This day brought us more than 50 000 birds, and just one day later we hit the 1 000 000 birds milestone after counting another 60 000+ birds! This million was the earliest ever million birds counted by BRC, and we realized there were probably still many more birds to come…

We also need to talk more in detail about the day (September 27th) we hit the one million raptors milestone. Or rather, we’ll let the Trektellen comment from station 2 do its work:

“It [was] the second best day ever for large eagles counted by BRC! One of our most experienced people even called today his most enjoyable day ever. Funnily enough most of today's large eagles were counted by the coordinator – the one person on station who is not supposed to count any birds. The moment one of our counters found a ridiculously large stream of incoming large eagles left the coordinator with no choice than to step in and start clicking a stream of almost 2000 large eagles, while some counters tried to identify as many as possible! It will forever remain a mystery whether the 1.000.000th bird was a Steppe buzzard or a large eagle, but today more than ever are the odds for large eagle looking good!”

The next couple of days were relatively quiet again in terms of raptors, but sweet numbers of Black Storks, including flocks of 99 and 133 individuals, the occasional Crag Martin, good views of Red-breasted Flycatchers around station and a flock of around 50 Eurasian Jays were perfect entertainment after two huge days!

The last day of September was again an amazing day. While station 1 ‘gloupsed’ (completely swallowed by clouds) in the afternoon, the morning spectacle brought our second-best day ever for Marsh Harriers with 1088 birds counted by just station 1! After having had our 1597 Marshes day three weeks earlier, none of us were expecting another crazy spectacle like this. By the end of the season, we had counted a mind-boggling figure of 12 911 Marsh Harriers, about 50% more than our previous season record! Five digits – what a beautiful year for this species!

October started rainy on the 1st, with just three weeks left to count. But wait! Even though the weather was so bad that we didn’t count from station 2, the very brief dry spells during the morning still provided the small team on station 1 with significant numbers of Steppe Buzzards and some Black Kites, suggesting that the urge to migrate was very strong. When at the beginning of the afternoon the rain stopped, it was as if the flood gates had opened, and we summoned more counters to station 1. They ended up counting almost 30 000 birds in just a few hours, but above all, we realized that tomorrow was probably going to be a huge day!

And huge it was! On the 2nd of October we counted another 100 000 raptors, including an insane number of 95 595 Steppe Buzzards. As we took part in the annual EuroBirdwatch event, we happily contributed to counting some non-protocol birds for a change as well.  We inevitably missed some passerines with the raptor mayhem going on, but we were still happy to log some non-protocol birds like Bee-eater, Barn Swallow, Sand Martin, Levant and Eurasian Sparrowhawk, Merlin, and Common Rosefinch during this event. Besides thousands of Steppe Buzzards, protocol-wise it was also a great day with once again very good numbers of Marsh Harriers (481), over 2000 large eagles (mostly Lesser Spotted) and 4 Griffon Vultures!

The season continued in a pattern we by now had gotten used to: some more rainy days with barely any birds followed by an explosion of raptors! October 5th delivered another 100 000+ day with 111 153 birds counted by both stations combined. While almost 95 % of these birds were Steppe Buzzards, the remaining 5 % provided us with an exciting species variety and good numbers of the rarer large eagles like Greater Spotted, Steppe, and Imperial Eagles. This day was also the first day of the season that we counted more than 10 Imperial Eagles. (And it wouldn’t be the last!)

One day later, on the 6th, we counted a total of 14 Imperial Eagles. Days like these would continue until the end of the season, with a record day of 24 Imperial Eagles on October 8th. Just this one day was more than one third of what was previously the annual record for this species! This season we counted a majestic total of 138 Imperial Eagles of which most birds were stunning juveniles. Absolutely amazing to see this vulnerable species pass by our counting stations in such great numbers! Days with this many Imperials became even more majestic as we ended up not calling them out, but letting the ‘Imperial March’ from the Star Wars movies announce each and every one of them. The march frequently played until the very end of the season and will undoubtedly feature in future seasons – hopefully as prominent as it did this season!

On October 8th, when the team on station 2 was casually clicking away toward their record number of Imperial Eagles, a voice trembling from excitement made its way from station 2’s walky-talky to station 1’s: “Station 1… We just found a frickin’ Lammergeier!!” It did not take long to explain to station 1 where the bird was, and everybody on the stations was able to see this highly-anticipated bird. Up until then this species had never been seen in BRC’s history. Thinking back to this announcement over the walky-talky still gives me goosebumps.

Another surprise came on October 10th, when there was almost no migration at all, and then suddenly at least 90 Alpine Swifts decided to migrate by station 1. Station 2 was entertained by a Short-eared Owl that landed in a tree near the station, while they were slightly disappointed they had seen ‘only’ one Imperial Eagle that day.

With the total number of birds passing through the bottleneck slowing down significantly, but with astonishing numbers of special species, the team’s enthusiasm was great. Even more so when we realised that we were almost going to break the all-time BRC season total record from 2014. That happened on October 11th, when another 10 000 raptors passed through the bottleneck. Again, the day brought more than one thousand large eagles and we had stunning views of multiple overhead Griffon Vultures. The previous highest seasonal count for the latter species was 9, but we ended this season with 22 Griffon Vultures on our clickers. Yet another species that showed up in absolutely record-smashing numbers! Shockingly, we also counted 204 Greater Spotted Eagles that day — we’ve had entire seasons with less!

Another species that broke all previous autumn records was Hen Harrier. For most of our counters, it is the least special of the ringtail harriers, but in Batumi it is by far the rarest of the three. While this species is more common during our Spring counts, several individuals typically start showing up in late September, slowly increasing in numbers toward the end of the season. We assume that the big bulk of these birds passes through the bottleneck when BRC has already left the premises, but up until this year we still counted an average of 25 individuals per season, with 41 as the previous seasonal highest count. This year, though, we counted a total of – hold your horses – 185 Hen Harriers!

The end of the season is also the time when one can enjoy migration of eagles in relative peace and quiet. With the big bulk of raptors having passed, there is more time to carefully look at the hundreds of eagles still migrating south. While Lesser Spotted Eagles are by far the most common of the large eagles overall, by the end of the season you get to experience days with more Steppe or Greater Spotted Eagles than Lesser Spotteds. Perfect times for the eagle enthusiasts among us! This season we counted more large eagles than ever before, including 4572 Lesser Spotted, 814 Greater Spotted, 383 Steppe and 138 Imperials Eagles. A further 9697 large eagles remained unidentified – an unfortunate side-effect of this migration intensity, poor light conditions and distance.

With just a week left to count, we were still experiencing days with thousands of raptors, and on October 15th we counted our 1 400 000th bird of the season. We had two consecutive days with a Rough-legged Buzzard, a species that winters in Georgia, but is a rare sight for our project. Only twice before was this species observed by one of our team. Other highlights during the last days of the season were a Krüper’s Nuthatch sneaking through the bushes around station 2, several good views of stunning Greater Spotted Eagles of the ‘fulvescens’ plumage – a pale color morph that is not often observed by our team –, massive flocks of Barn Swallows, this season’s only Red-rumped Swallow, and nice numbers of Woodlarks and Mistle thrushes.

With just four days to go, the weather forecast for the first three days was just horrible, and we expected three rest days and one beautiful last day. Some volunteers didn’t want to stay at our guest houses and decided to go up to station 1 in the rain, right on time to welcome the first Common Cranes of the season! While almost all species had been doing so incredibly well, Common Cranes were definitely an exception. Never did they show up for the first time so late in the season. The three diehard counters that had gone up to count in the rain announced the Cranes on WhatsApp perfectly on time so all other volunteers down at the guest houses were able to run outside to witness the passage of the first Cranes of the season!

And, precisely like we expected, after three days of rain, the last counting day proved to be a beautiful one! Station 2 counted 11 124 birds of which still more than 10 000 Steppe Buzzards, 4 Imperial eagles, 2 Griffon Vultures and a last Crested Honey Buzzard. Station 1 meanwhile counted 271 Common Cranes and had beautiful views of yet another fulvescens Greater Spotted Eagle. A perfect day to say goodbye, even though we were still curious what the next days (weeks?) would bring!

In the end, we ended up counting a fantastic number of 1 422 171 raptors during the 13th edition of the BRC Autumn Count, an all-time record for the project! We counted record numbers of Black Kites, Marsh Harriers, Hen Harriers, Booted Eagles, Short-toed Eagles, Greater Spotted Eagles, Imperial Eagles, Long-legged Buzzards, Crested Honey Buzzards, Ospreys, White-tailed Eagles and Griffon Vultures! Unfortunately this season was also a new low for Montagu’s Harrier. Regardless, a very big thank you to all our volunteers, to our hosts, and to our donors and sponsors! None of this would have been possible without you.

Didi madloba! Until next year!

This year’s count was made possible by:

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