06-09-2018 Kites in the Wind
Photo by Folkert de Boer.
It was relatively quiet on the counting stations, so we went early morning on an excursion to the Poti Delta. When we left the hills of the lower Caucasus we noticed a lot of groups of black kites roosting along the road and small kettles of kites and honey buzzards gathering to proceed their journey to the south. This promised to be a good day of migration! And it became a memorable day for us, because we witnessed migration as we never had seen before.
When we almost reached Poti, we literally drove into a flock of black kites! After the usual skirmish in the bus to get out first, we were almost blown away; not only by having tens of black kites within arms reach, but mostly because of the severe wind.
This wind was of course also the reason for the black kites being so close. They really had to struggle to get to the south. We even saw black kites, heavily flapping, flying backwards. Whole groups were blown away as leaves in a storm. As annoying this had to be for the birds, for us it was truly an amazing experience.
Back at the office, it turned out that actually not many raptors did make it that day through the harsh winds over the high plains. In the couple of hours we spent on the road, we had seen a multitude of birds fighting the wind compared to the numbers counted.
Luckily the next day the wind had laid down, because that day over 60k raptors did arrive at our counting stations..
Photo by Folkert de Boer.
Photo by Folkert de Boer.
Photo by Folkert de Boer.
Photo by Folkert de Boer.
Photo by Folkert de Boer.