Reflections from Batumi Bird Fest 2024
Guest blog by Tomas Axén Haraldsson, OSME Youth Development Officer
OSME are long standing supporters and collaborators of the sensational Batumi Raptor Count (BRC), now doing their 17th straight autumn of raptor migration monitoring in the hills above the Black See resort town of Batumi, in southwestern Georgia. For the last ten of these 17 years the regional tourism authorities have arranged a week-long “festival” in September to celebrate the annual raptor bonanza and the visitors’ stream it has built up over the years.
This year it took place 18-23 September, and I was invited to give a talk on OSME and our work related to Batumi, youth development and ongoing progress. Other guest speakers included Professor Yossi Leshem from Israel, Chris Van Der Heyden from birdingplaces.eu, Tohar Tal Chairman of BRC, Brect De Meulenaer with a new book ok Georgian nature, Levan Duduchava of Georgian Falcon Center and Nika Paposhvili , a Georgian ecologist and expert on the relict population of Velvet Scoter.
We spent some nice mornings and days birding and the evenings with seminars, meetings and dinners, well cared for by our Georgian hosts and superb guide Aslan Bolkvadze (an OSME member, by the way). Really useful context for OSME to be present in, with several people of great interest for our work and future collaboration. The flow of birds at the raptor watch points was good but a bit distant, with thousands of mainly Black Kites but also Booted Eagles, Lesser Spotted Eagles, three species of harriers, Levant Sparrowhawks, Black Storks and many European Bee-eaters passing against the subtropical hill forests.
We visited some lowland deltas and rivers including the Chorokhi which was rich in migrants at this time due to light rain, with hundreds of Black-winged Pratincoles, Stone Curlew, Little Bittern, passerines including Caspian Stonechats, resting Pallid Harrier and much more. The hunting (both legal and illegal as it seemed) was quite disturbing and downright outrageous as we found a bloodied Black-winged Pratincole and other birds that are NOT legal to hunt. After a few years of limited hunting and a relative safe haven for birds this has now gotten worse. A guest blog and a protest to the regional authorities is underway on this.
One purpose of this trip for me was to meet up with the BRC team that now also included the very first two Flyway Monitoring Trainees, the first recipients of a new initiative from BRC and OSME. We had been keen to use and make available this formidable platform for learning, this cheerful hub of raptor conservation and best practice dissemination that BRC has become, and at the same time as young people from our region request increased mobility and opportunities to develop. The result is the Flyway Monitoring Traineeship, an annual funding initiative.
For four weeks two lucky young conservationists from the OSME region get to learn and be involved in the daily monitoring and work of BRC, a visit fully covered by OSME. The first two award winners are Mitra Daneshvar from Iran and Alyona Kaptyonkina from Kazakhstan. I met up with them during ongoing raptor migration at the count stations of Sakhalvasho and Shuamta, and got to see their efforts live. A video interview from this visit can be seen at the OSME Facebook page.
Mitra Daneshvar reflects:
“I had considered participating in the Batumi Raptor Count for the past five years. While applying for this year, I was considering coming here for a month and, being lucky to be one of the first trainees of the OSME Traineeship program, I became a full-season counter. Although the primary purpose of a raptor count project is getting to know birds of prey better, meeting people from around the world, with the same interest but also different backgrounds is the part that you will never forget. Here, everyone including the BRC team, coordinators, counters and local families are so friendly and supportive that you feel at home.
As a trainee, I had the chance to see how this international project is being organized and learn about the challenges. I worked closely with the coordinators and learned a lot from them. By working with professional people, I have a stronger motivation and lots of new ideas that I like to implement in a similar project (Galugah Raptor Count) in my country, Iran. Thanks to OSME and BRC, I’ve had a wonderful experience and let me tell you, I already know that I will be back to BRC very soon!”
Alyona Kaptyonkina continues: “Two years ago, I first heard from my colleagues about the project Batumi Raptor Count. At that time I could not imagine that I would end up here, that every day I would enjoy the view of the mountains, the Black Sea and to count birds. During the autumn, thousands of birds of prey fly here every day, and BRC volunteers do a great job. I learned to identify the species of birds of prey in flight, as well as their age and gender. During my time in Batumi, I saw thousands of flying Black Kites (Milvus migrans) and European Honey Buzzards (Pernis apivorus). Half of them turned out to be viewed very closely and photographed. The other part flew far away, and I practiced counting thousands of tiny dots (birds of prey for sure, but flying far from the station). I have seen many different harriers, Booted eagles (Hieraaetus pennatus), Crested Honey Buzzards (Pernis ptilorhynchus), Short-toed Eagles (Circaetus gallicus), Ospreys (Pandion haliaetus), Steppe Eagles (Aquila nipalensis), one Saker Falcon (Falco cherrug) and even Egyptian Vultures (Neophron percnopterus). It was the first time I saw Levant sparrowhawks (Accipiter brevipes) and Lesser Spotted Eagles (Clanga pomarina). BRC is not only birds, it is also a huge community of interesting people from all over the world who love birds. Thanks to this program, I not only learned a lot about birds, learned how to identify them, but also found a huge number of friends from different countries. Thank you OSME and BRC for such a great opportunity!’
Alyona has just returned home to Kazakhstan where these newfound experiences will be put to good use. She is involved with the Kazakh nature conservation group BBRC that has received OSME funding for their work on Red-footed Falcon breeding surveys as well as other important efforts.
Such initiatives as this traineeship, and the valuable personal experiences it makes possible, would not happen without the donations and support from OSME members, sponsors and corporate partners – thank you!
Interested in applying for the two Traineeship slots in 2025 and beyond? Read more about this on the BRC web BRC Flyway Monitoring Traineeship in collaboration with OSME — Batumi Raptor Count