The Best Day Ever

After 8 days of bad weather and barely a thousand birds per day, such a day as today 6 years ago, October 2nd 2014, will remain with us for a long time. We reached the million the day before, but that day was so far, the best migration day ever at the BRC.

The beginning of the day was a warning of what to expect. As soon as the counters of Station 2 reached their station and asked Station 1 how the morning was going, they already had around 300 Marsh Harriers! Insane.

But from then on the situation completely stopped, the sky was empty. Something that surprised us because the day was good, but it also made us think that they would all have to arrive together at some point.

And so it was... little by little, when the thermals appeared, "Bunny Mountains" was filling up with monster kettles! Thousands of Steppe Buzzards flew over us like a veritable tsunami of raptors. In such situation, communication was hard between volunteers and between stations, the sky was literally covered with raptors. Our counters counted under their shadow, like Spartans fighting under the arrows of the Persian soldiers at the Thermopiles.

And the eagles came... the streams of Buzzards were transformed into Eagles in Station 1, we could not believe our eyes, hundreds and hundreds of them crossed overhead, making the clickers burn sending their numbers without stopping to the tablet-guy, that did not stop running from east to west and overhead. Madness swirled over us, but the 16 brave counters did the best they had of them and managed to count almost 300,000 raptors in a single day, the never seen until today. Greater and Lesser-spotted Eagles, Steppes, Imperials, Booteds, Short-toeds and up to 19 different species of birds of prey... the subsequent celebration was in accordance with what was experienced and the rest is already history of BRC...