We're looking for volunteers for Autumn 2022
After finishing a successful crowdfunding campaign, we’re happy to finally announce the call for counters. We have now opened the application form and are looking for counters to join us between August 12th and October 21st, 2022. As always, we are looking for volunteers of all skill levels with an interest in migration, ability to work in a team and with the possibility to commit for at least two weeks. Joining our count as a counter is a great opportunity to learn more about raptors and their identification, while also contributing to long-term population monitoring. Volunteers will stay at one of the local guesthouses and enjoy the passage of over 1 million birds of prey together with other likeminded volunteers from all over the world. The daily fee depends on the length of your stay and ranges between €10 and €21. Students can pay a discounted fee and Georgian counters can join for free (limited places available).
Successful completion of 2022 Crowdfunding!
When we launched our crowdfunding campaign on Christmas Eve 2021 we were not entirely sure what to expect. Over the years we have received endless words of encouragement and appreciation. However, asking people to match that appreciation with financial contributions is something else, and past attempts to raise donations have not been as successful as we hoped. Nevertheless, believing in the value of our work, realising that we had little other funding options left, and counting on the generosity of the birdwatching community, we decided to set an ambitious goal: to raise 20.000EUR before the call for volunteers would be published. Now, we are very happy and proud to say that we did even better! We raised over 23.000EUR in a little over 3 months. Added to our reserves from 2021 means we currently have 28.840EUR to invest in raptor monitoring in Batumi. What a delight!
The whole crowdfunding endeavour has been hugely exciting to the BRC team. As soon as we published the crowdfunding campaign donations started streaming in, and by 29 Dec we had crossed the mark of 10.000EUR. This was probably the moment when many team members started to believe we could really reach our ambitious 20K target. By mid-February the counter stood at 16K. At that point the rate at which donations were coming did slow down a lot. Fortunately, however, we still had an ace up our sleeves...
Behind the scenes OSME had taken notice of our efforts, and kindly offered to match up to 2K in donations to help boost the crowdfunding. We cooked up a plan to launch a joint campaign on March 1st, the day that our 3rd and final spring count started (also funded by OSME btw!). A few days before that the war in Ukraine started. Nevertheless, we decided to stick to our plan. After all, and as we wrote before, projects like the BRC, where people from all creeds come together to work towards a common goal, and form friendships across cultural and national borders, are precisely what’s needed to help build a peaceful future in this crazy world.
The response to our joint campaign with OSME was amazing. By March 8th we hit the 20K target, and donations kept coming in even after that! Swarovski Optik pitched in with a donation of 1000EUR, and we were informed that around 2000EUR of donations had arrived to our project account at Natuurpunt, which facilitates tax-deductible donations for our Belgian supporters.
All together we now have 28.000EUR in reserves, plenty to fund the 2022 autumn count, and nearly half of the budget we’ll need for 2023. The enthusiastic response to our crowdfunding campaign has made us feel hugely supported by the international birdwatching community, and we hope we will be able to rely on that support in years to come. After all, and despite ongoing efforts to secure more structural funding, our monitoring work will continue to depend on your generous support for the foreseeable future.
That said, thanks to your support the immediate future looks bright, and we are excited we’ll be able to organise another outstanding count with many old-time counters and new volunteers next autumn. Didi madloba!
Already 400K raptors during the 3rd and final Spring Count
The 3rd pilot Spring Count is already halfway through, we have been counting for one and a half months and have already counted 400k raptors this season.
A classic spring view: Black Kites in front of the Batumi skyline. Photo by Marc Heetkamp.
For the first three weeks weather conditions were bad with heavy snowfall, which made counting difficult. But in the short periods without rain and snow, we were still able to count some raptors and enjoy the passerines around the station. From the 21st of March on, the weather finally started to clear up and migration was on! And with the still cold and snowy surroundings -we were standing in 30cm of snow- the increasing number of raptors made up for it. We were counting thousands of Black Kites and Steppe Buzzards and lots of large eagles. And even saw insane numbers of Imperial Eagle (26), Greater Spotted Eagle (53) and Short-toed Eagle (204) in a day! What makes these kinds of numbers (and in general raptor migration) even more enjoyable is the close fly-bys paired with great light conditions from the snow, which makes for wonderful views and photos. Towards the end of March, we were counting 20k+ raptors a day (most of them Black Kites), often in messy streams in every distance code. That is the Spring Count for you, thousands of birds to count by only a few counters. But that was nothing compared to the 1st of April, when we counted 56k+ raptors! Black Kites and Steppe Buzzards everywhere, massive kettles and streams everywhere. To count this big mess is a challenge, but our counters thrived on the chaos and adrenaline and managed just fine (of course we counted a lot of medium raptors).
An unusual white bird in an unusually white landscape. A Short-toed Eagle making its way through the snowy bottleneck. Photo by Marc Heetkamp.
It's now almost halfway April and we are still counting over 10k raptors a day and even found 4 Rough-legged Buzzards this season (2 in one day on April 9)! The snow is gone, flowers are starting to bloom, butterflies are flying around, and passerines have started to sing: spring is here!
Red-breasted Flycatcher. Photo by Marc Heetkamp.
Bugle. Photo by Elien Hoekstra.
Semi-collared Flycatcher. Photo by Marc Heetkamp.
We still have over 1 month to go, and we are eagerly waiting to see what more is to come. After this third and final pilot Spring Count we will process all our spring migration data and we plan to publish these results in the near future.