World-class migration monitoring at Batumi soars or falls with your support!
Dear raptor enthusiast,
Over the past years we have been getting more and more surprised reactions from volunteers and visitors about the fact that Batumi Raptor Count is a 100% volunteer-based organisation. “How can it be that this world-class migration count is run by people in their spare time?” And they are right to be surprised! The fact of the matter is that our monitoring work is of extraordinary quality, delivering unique data to detect trends in the abundance, demography and migration timing of otherwise poorly known raptor populations. Our open and transparent data collection and sharing procedures far exceed common standards for bird observatories worldwide. At the same time we have provided numerous young people from around the world with life-changing and career-defining experiences in raptor research and conservation. Our migration counts and physical presence in Georgia also serve as the platform from which we have run numerous education and conservation projects in the past.
For thirteen years we have managed to keep the counts going without big crowdfunding efforts. However, despite the fact that long-term monitoring is critical to understand how bird populations are faring in our rapidly changing world, structural funding for monitoring schemes such as ours is very hard, if not impossible, to find. Until now we have been able to get by on grassroots conservation grants, support from loyal sponsors like Swarovski Optik and OSME, t-shirt sales, donations from ecotourism operators and members of the public, and last but not least: thousands of hours of unpaid work by 395 volunteers from dozens of countries. However, times are a changin, and now that BRC is entering its 14th year of continued monitoring efforts the moment has come to tell you loud and clear: the Batumi Raptor Count soars or falls with your support. The best way to ensure our world-class monitoring work can continue is to donate generously to our charitable cause!
Asking for money is never fun. But we believe we have earned our place as a respectable, reliable, and resilient organisation that helps make the world a better place for raptors. So here is the deal: we need 20.000EUR per year to run our autumn count, and the only way we have left to get it is by asking for your support. If we do not get the required amount before June 2022, there will not be a raptor count in Georgia next autumn. However, given our large international base of supporters and followers, we believe it should be possible to raise this amount through an annual crowdfunding campaign, the first of which will run from Dec 2021 through May 2022.
On the crowdfunding page you will find more details on what the money will be used for exactly. On average, 200EUR funds one day of high-quality counts. With 130EUR you fund a one-week participation of a young Georgian conservationist. So what are you waiting for? Please, help us circulate this message widely, and let’s get the funds we need asap. The sooner we get our budgets together, the better our team can focus on organizing a high-quality count, producing important research, and organising valuable education and conservation work in parallel to the counts, instead of wasting our time competing with other conservation groups for small grants. Your donation makes a massive difference to us, and you know we’ll use it wisely!
Warm wishes,
Batumi Raptor Count team
BRC 2021 T-Shirt
We are glad to be back counting raptors again! Fed up with all the darkness in our lives recently, our designers have created a more colorful T-shirt than ever before. Add some color to your life, and support our raptor monitoring and conservation work, with the 2021 T-shirt!
P.S. For those of you not used to so much color in our T-shirts, or those who prefer to ‘blend in’ among the birding crowd, we have a beige/sand-colored version as well (online only).
If you visit us in Georgia
The following two versions of the 2021 T-shirt can be bought in Sakhalvasho when you visit our count station.
This T-Shirt color cannot be ordered online, but is exclusive to visitors of the count sites.
This T-Shirt color cannot be ordered online, but is exclusive to visitors of the count sites.
Online orders
The following T-shirts can be ordered online. The design is the same as above, but the colors of the T-shirts are different.
5 Reasons why you should NOT participate in the Batumi Raptor Count
Since 2008, in over a decade of counts, over 380 volunteers have participated in the annual Batumi Raptor Count. This year, the 13th count is organized, which runs from August 12th until October 21st of 2021. Despite the positive stories you may have heard from volunteers or visitors, participation in the count or coming as a visitor is not without some drawbacks! In the spirit of transparency, we have listed the most frequently encountered problems participants face during and after their stay.
1. Watching raptors won’t ever be the same again
There’s a distinct non-zero chance Imperial Eagles will fly in your face while you’re on station. Luckily, a collision was narrowly avoided here. Photo by Bart Hoekstra.
Those fantastic days of raptor migration in your home country or in other migration hotspots? They will forever pale in comparison with what you experience in the Batumi bottleneck. Every single Honey Buzzard you see will bring back the good memories of seeing 50,000+ migrate on a single day; every harrier will remind you of the sun rising in a sky scattered with Marsh, Montagu’s and Pallid harriers; every eagle… well, you get the point. By participating, you risk becoming forever spoiled with experiencing migration of more than a million birds and around 30 species in a period of only 2 months.
Steppe Buzzards making a mess of an otherwise pristine blue sky. Ugh. Photo by Rafa Benjumea.
2. Painful fingers
At BRC we like to count birds so much, we count them one at a time! Our trusty clickers keep track of the numbers, while the most important thing counters have to do is move their fingers at the pace of birds crossing the transect line. A calm but continuous click-click-click-click is the resulting background sound throughout the day… That is until migration breaks loose and the calm clicking turns into a frenzy of rattling counters all over the station. The upshot? You will physically be able to feel the intensity of migration. The downside? Your fingers will end up hurting and we cannot promise you won’t develop temporary RSI-like symptoms. Imagine clicking streams of birds like in the video below, but for hours on end on all sides of the stations:
Video by John Wright.
3. We don't count everything
At BRC we have made the decision to focus on a few key species for the bottleneck. Our aim is to count those species really well, instead of counting all species badly. These tens of thousands of Bee-Eaters flying by? All these Hobbies, Common and Lesser Kestrels? These Swallows or Alpine Swifts? Painful, maybe, but you will just have to enjoy them. Instead, we’ll keep you busy identifying, sexing and ageing our target species at a rapid pace. This should provide plenty of entertainment and learning experience for even the most hardcore of counters.
Yeah, too bad, you’ll just have to enjoy those. Photo by Juho Jolkkonen.
4. (Almost) Every day is the same
Every single day, except for the one day a week in which you have a day off, will look like this: You wake up an hour before sunrise, prepare your stuff and have breakfast. A lunch prepared by the host families will be waiting for you to take to the station. Then, from sunrise until 2 hours before sunset you will be counting birds in a standardized fashion, regardless of the weather conditions. When you return to the guesthouse, certainly tired but possibly satisfied, families will provide a dinner full of Georgian dishes, and only after that you’re free to do as you like. Ugh.
Clicking these clickers, scanning the sky through the binoculars and identifying species by scope. All. Day. Long. Photo by Bart Hoekstra.
All we can offer to break the daily slur, besides the birds you’ll be seeing, is 1 day off per week in which you can explore the region (or sleep), a very international group of like-minded birders from all experience levels, a pleasant atmosphere (and bonding over shared suffering), regular evening presentations to get to know the raptor species and each other, drinks in the Green Cafe and the occasional team visits to the nearby beach.
Doing the same thing every day ensures we run a smooth count, even if tens of thousands of Honey Buzzards pass by. Video by Triin Kaasiku.
5. You may come back again… and again…
The birds, the people, the country, the food, there are plenty of reasons to come back one more time. And many participants do come back as counter or coordinator, time and again, despite the hardships described above. It is quite likely you will plan to come again next autumn the moment you have ended your stay and leave Georgia for your home country. Seriously consider this before you plan to come only once. The Batumi Raptor Count is a gateway drug for a life-long raptor obsession.
Sunrise from station 1. The calm before the storm in a landscape you won't ever forget about. Photo by Juho Jolkkonen.
So what?
If after reading this you still think you want to participate, you can read more and apply here . But… you have been warned!
An earlier version of this blog originally appeared on the website of OSME, the Ornithological Society of the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia.