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. The results of the spring count show interesting in-flight foraging behaviour of Black Kites and describe their more numerous occurrence in spring compared to autumn. The paper is now available open access!
Black Kite with an interesting prey: a mole! Photo by Tohar Tal.
Abstract
In 2019 and 2020 the Batumi Raptor Count conducted two small-scale pilot counts to assess the importance of the flyway in spring. We present preliminary results for Black Kite Milvus migrans, showing that this species is more numerous in spring than in autumn and that it engages in in-flight foraging while passing through the Batumi bottleneck, a behaviour that has never been observed in twelve years of autumn counts. In-flight foraging appears to be largely opportunistic, occurring during only a short period of the Black Kite migration season and involving a minority of individuals. As such, in-flight foraging opportunities are unlikely to be the main cause of the greater spring aggregation of Black Kites in the eastern Black Sea flyway.
This year the third and final spring count will be conducted from the start of March till the end of May. Are you interested in participating? Don’t hesitate and send an email to spring@batumiraptorcount.org.