500,000 birds counted!
Three days with over 90,000 birds each have carried the Batumi count past half a million, as Honey Buzzards fill the skies and more species are still to come.
Among the most exciting milestones of the season, we are already halfway to reaching our annual goal of exceeding 1,000,000 birds counted. Over the past three days, the skies have exploded with Honey Buzzards, resulting in daily totals of more than 90,000! We have only counted this number this early in 2012, 2015, and 2019, with all of these years achieving it on the same date!
Last year was BRC’s record season and the first year we reached 1.5 million birds. We are off to a very strong start this year, and we are still waiting on higher numbers of several raptor species we would have normally seen more of by now. Could this year be even bigger than 2025? Will the “specials” arrive en masse? We don’t yet know, but we are certain there’s a lot more in store for us in the coming weeks!
