Slow migration, but Oriental Honey-Buzzards on three succesive days...

Hello dear BRC enthusiasts,

it is almost hard to believe the titel of this news entry ourselves. Nevertheless, following the first Crested (Oriental) Honey Buzzard Pernis ptilorhynchus on Sept 9th (see previous entry) another adult female and an adult male were seen on Sept 10th and 11th respectively. We uphold the stringent rule asking for well-described records of unusual species like these. In all cases the observed characteristics were more than sufficient to accept the identification.

The young Belgian counter Michiel Dusselier managed to make good photographs of the second female Crested Honey Buzzard that passed on Sept 10th.

Adult female Crested Honey Buzzard - Pernis ptilorhynchus - Batumi, Sept 10th 2010

Apart from these exceptional records, migration has been rather slow from Sept 9th up untill Sept 11th. This is to Batumi standards offcourse. At least several hundreds of raptors still pass the bottleneck on a daily basis, allthough the major bulk of Honey Buzzards Pernis apivorus seems to have dried up since the last spectacular peak days.

The quality of observations does remain good and many nice species can thus be observed and studied intensively by counters and students! Male Pallid Harriers Circus marcrourus especially manage to ´wow´ the observers, even when over 20 of these beautiful birds are seen in a single day.

Adult male Pallid Harrier - Circus macrourus

As always, we will keep you posted on the developments of BRC2010.

Nahuamdis!

The BRC Team