BRC: A model for migration monitoring in new BirdLife review
A new Sandgrouse paper, initiated by Ben Jobson (BirdLife International), reviews the challenges and opportunities for monitoring of migratory soaring birds in the East African-Eurasian flyway. In it, Batumi Raptor Count is highlighted as a key site to monitor the migration of numerous soaring birds, and a best practice model for migration monitoring in the region. That achievement would not have been possible without the collective effort of all volunteers that have allowed us to conduct counts over more than a decade; rigorous data collection, management and analyses; and striving for the highest possible standards in open and reproducible research. Currently, there are more migration counts conducted across the flyway than ever before. We hope this renewed interest will boost collaboration among sites and eventually secures funds for long-term monitoring across the flyway.
Abstract
Monitoring of migratory soaring birds at flyway bottlenecks is vital for informing population estimates and detecting population-level changes, since monitoring these species on their breeding grounds is notoriously difficult. Since the last review of bottleneck monitoring in the Red Sea/Rift Valley flyway over 15 years ago, there has been progress to coordinate and standardise monitoring along flyways around the world for various avian groups, from waterbirds to raptors. The same period also saw dramatic improvements in our understanding of migratory routes through the development of remote tracking technologies. This article reviews current monitoring of major bottlenecks for migratory soaring birds in the East African-Eurasian flyway. We summarise developments in migratory soaring bird monitoring and research and identify priority locations for implementing standardised and coordinated monitoring initiatives. Our review identified 10 sites that have recorded one of the three highest counts for the 12 main migratory soaring bird species in the flyway, and can be considered priorities for targeting future monitoring. Additionally, we provide recommendations to progress coordination and standardisation of monitoring across this globally important flyway.
Now Open Access: From migration counts to conservation in a flyway under threat
In the August 2020 issue of British Birds, we published a long-form paper on Batumi Raptor Count. It summarises the 12-year history of BRC, provides a detailed description of a typical autumn migration season, and outlines some of our education and conservation plans for the future. We are happy to announce this article has now been made available open access, for everyone to read.
Photo by David Erterius.
On top of that, Wim Bovens and Olivier Dochy, have kindly offered to translate the article to Dutch for our audience in Belgium and The Netherlands. This translation was published in Natuur.oriolus and is now available open access too.
Abstract
Since 2008, the Batumi Raptor Count project has monitored the autumn migration of raptors at Batumi, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea in southwest Georgia. What started as an expedition by young birders has become an invaluable project for monitoring raptor populations in the little-studied east African–Palearctic flyway. Autumn raptor migration through the Batumi bottleneck is notable for globally important concentrations of Honey-buzzards Pernis apivorus, Montagu’s Circus pygargus, Pallid C. macrourus and Marsh Harriers C. aeruginosus and accounts for at least 1% of the global breeding population of ten raptor species. By stimulating migration-based ecotourism, the project has had a significant economic impact on the communities where the count stations are located, which has increased societal and political support to reduce the widespread illegal raptor shooting in the region; it has also developed an important educational role for schoolchildren and older students. This paper summarises the 12-year history of the Batumi Raptor Count, and provides a detailed description of a typical autumn migration season. The project aims to expand its education and conservation remit while continuing to monitor one of the world’s biggest raptor migration bottlenecks.
Download the articles
Article in British Birds
English
Article in Natuur.oriolus
Dutch
New publication: Population trends from 8 years of BRC Autumn Counts
We are proud to announce that counting millions of raptors, over thousands of hours and the help of hundreds of volunteers has now resulted in a new open access publication in Ibis.
Juvenile (left) and adult female (right) Honey Buzzard. Photo by Bart Hoekstra.
For 8 important species for the bottleneck, we have analysed trends over the past 8 years of standardised counts (2011-2018). Despite this short study period, we can already detect moderate changes in abundance for at least one age class in all species except Pallid Harrier. You can find the summary of our results through the button below, or read the paper in its entirety in Ibis.
Wouter M.G. Vansteelant, Jasper Wehrmann, Dries Engelen, Johannes Jansen, Brecht Verhelst, Rafa Benjumea, Simon Cavaillès, Triin Kaasiku, Bart Hoekstra & Folkert de Boer. (2019) Accounting for differential migration strategies between age groups to monitor raptor population dynamics in the eastern Black Sea flyway. Ibis.