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A swirling kettle of migrating Steppe Buzzards over the Batumi bottleneck

 

Count

This season we have counted

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A European Honey Buzzard in flight over the Batumi bottleneck
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Honey Buzzards
A Steppe Buzzard soaring above the count station
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Steppe Buzzards
A Black Kite gliding over the migration bottleneck
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Black Kites
A Booted Eagle in flight
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Booted Eagles
A Western Marsh Harrier quartering low over the fields
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Marsh Harriers
A Lesser Spotted Eagle soaring on a thermal
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Lesser Spotted Eagles
A Montagu's Harrier in flight
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Montagu's Harriers
A Pallid Harrier hunting over open ground
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Pallid Harriers

Daily totals

Our annual autumn count runs from August 12th until October 21st. During that period you can find our daily and season totals updated daily on Trektellen.org and below. These are our raw results, uncorrected for ‘double counts’: birds possibly counted from both stations. We distinguish raw and unprocessed data, with these double counts, from cleaned and processed data, without double counts.

Annual totals

Totals by species, 2011–2026

Batumi is one of the world's major raptor migration bottlenecks. The table below shows reviewed, standardised totals for target species and unidentified groups, corrected for double counts and excluding observations outside the applicable seasonal and daily counting windows. Early-morning harrier counts are included where the protocol applies. These processed figures differ from the raw Trektellen totals shown above. A dash (–) means that species was not monitored in a standardised fashion that year.

Updated 3 November 2026.

Season raptor and non-raptor migration count totals by species and year, sortable by column
Buzzards
European Honey-buzzard 557,629 561,312 457,255 491,188 431,401 515,272 495,565 486,391 518,356 511,380 560,456 656,643 427,861 643,461 370,514
Steppe Buzzard 221,713 334,171 82,369 169,708 214,575 426,895 251,727 301,848 282,716 203,934 199,936 486,422 415,587 185,375 –
Common Buzzard 4 0 1 4 6 8 10 8 9 17 19 8 14 10 0
Crested Honey-buzzard 82 28 89 28 43 42 27 9 13 10 27 24 49 12 8
Long-legged Buzzard 12 221 55 31 20 81 49 – – – – – – – –
Rough-legged Buzzard 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0
Pernis sp. 0 1 4 17 0 0 2 6 2 2 0 0 0 0 0
Buzzard sp. 277 133 7 44 7 68 6,683 15,933 0 1,978 0 219 206 239 2,054
Kites
Black Kite 400,308 326,417 226,766 293,925 306,619 282,267 222,124 149,195 159,215 163,346 118,449 104,717 104,331 101,605 80,241
Red Kite 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
Black-winged Kite 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Kite sp. 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Eagles
Lesser Spotted Eagle 4,276 5,002 3,768 4,240 2,808 4,361 3,550 4,266 4,701 3,829 4,058 2,464 3,834 4,540 5,848
Greater Spotted Eagle 330 566 482 351 329 732 349 426 331 273 395 244 204 160 220
Steppe Eagle 210 267 223 209 113 351 414 437 274 251 474 259 344 166 184
Eastern Imperial Eagle 10 43 12 12 23 125 38 62 44 29 32 45 37 11 37
Golden Eagle 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 2 1 0 0
Booted Eagle 8,871 7,380 6,613 7,498 5,980 7,774 6,990 5,196 6,828 7,385 6,655 6,141 6,181 6,987 6,434
Short-toed Eagle 2,629 2,699 2,186 2,048 1,882 2,442 1,638 1,842 1,463 1,509 1,399 1,459 1,457 1,388 1,362
Osprey 180 164 171 182 118 149 141 129 120 143 136 103 147 80 122
White-tailed Eagle 9 14 9 9 6 11 4 5 4 7 7 4 3 4 1
Large eagle sp. 7,844 6,885 6,245 5,848 4,680 9,248 5,180 5,539 3,510 2,134 2,588 7,326 6,746 2,430 2,754
Harriers
Marsh Harrier 7,950 10,784 6,916 5,553 7,846 11,287 8,134 8,072 7,412 6,131 8,450 7,017 7,593 5,521 5,061
Montagu's Harrier 1,503 2,055 2,127 2,085 1,504 1,660 2,341 1,942 3,589 2,787 3,269 2,794 3,247 5,011 2,744
Pallid Harrier 318 431 404 328 197 493 367 518 1,725 368 751 834 750 802 365
Hen Harrier 1 18 16 1 8 120 33 41 35 6 29 41 16 19 6
Ringtail Harrier sp. 3,247 5,542 4,042 2,770 2,958 5,186 3,671 5,449 3,132 3,454 5,589 5,873 5,411 6,486 4,312
Harrier sp. 69 89 25 26 258 157 67 103 42 67 8 16 35 11 43
Vultures
Egyptian Vulture 24 25 10 19 15 38 21 17 19 28 27 19 36 24 40
Griffon Vulture 18 11 1 2 5 20 2 3 4 4 1 9 9 1 2
Black Vulture 0 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 1
Bearded Vulture 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Falcons
Eleonora's Falcon 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 0 1 1
Lanner Falcon 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1
Saker Falcon 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 2 3 1 1 2
Peregrine Falcon 7 24 23 21 20 31 35 22 26 26 40 32 28 48 31
Large falcon sp. 1 2 7 6 5 6 8 8 1 1 6 2 5 11 14
Other raptors
Medium raptor sp. 62,417 119,259 34,818 37,727 45,985 52,043 38,453 94,899 36,707 46,971 54,490 33,119 160,857 15,288 10,106
Raptor sp. 40 0 10 137 7 0 15 480 278 4 0 0 1 0 0
Storks & other migrants
White Stork 1,501 772 677 660 1,313 530 284 577 410 460 199 1,422 417 444 572
Black Stork 1,569 2,379 2,179 1,962 1,890 1,845 1,496 1,770 1,419 1,225 1,249 1,465 1,484 1,268 992
Stork sp. 1 2 0 0 7 5 5 14 0 0 0 0 25 10 0
Eurasian Crane 0 82 0 57 40 0 208 165 100 26 212 114 42 21 4
Demoiselle Crane 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Crane sp. 0 0 0 0 11 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
Great White Pelican 8 85 0 1 0 90 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0
Dalmatian Pelican 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 3 0 0
Roller 1,339 1,886 2,074 905 2,055 1,846 1,820 856 702 1,159 450 2,161 1,477 1,783 1,253
Turtle Dove 1,193 415 154 1,156 782 2,690 637 686 1,709 1,934 461 1,094 4,571 – –
Oriental Turtle Dove 13 4 5 5 3 10 6 – – – – – – – –
Common Woodpigeon 386 61 56 881 300 183 730 288 158 450 32 1,580 402 – –
Stock Dove 2,043 2,041 1,665 1,450 2,279 1,570 739 699 387 765 800 762 1,300 – –
Dove sp. 120 63 56 132 264 112 368 – – – – – – – –
Total raptors 1,279,983 1,383,547 834,659 1,024,017 1,027,420 1,320,871 1,047,641 1,082,847 1,030,560 956,075 967,296 1,315,839 1,144,991 979,693 492,508
Total non-raptors 8,177 7,790 6,866 7,209 8,944 8,881 6,293 5,055 4,885 6,021 3,405 8,598 9,721 3,526 2,821

Click a column header to sort. Scroll horizontally to see all years.

Where are the other species?

Over the years we have conducted several experimental counts and we have now settled on the target species in the tables above. For an overview of all the species we have recorded in the past 10 years, have a look at the raw Trektellen totals:

Where are the counts from 2008–2010?

Between 2008 and 2010 we conducted 3 pilot counts, which have guided the selection of target species for 2011 onwards. As this makes it hard to compare data from the period 2008–2010 and 2011 until now, we have decided not to show the pilot counts here. Use the Trektellen links above to browse through the results of these pilot counts.

What does ‘standardised’ mean?

To compare years fairly, we use a consistent set of counting conditions. The main totals cover our target species at the two main count stations from August 17th to October 16th, between one hour after sunrise and two hours before sunset. Harriers also have a separate early-morning counting period during part of the season. We correct for possibly double-counted birds.

We count for longer than this, but observations outside these limits stay in the full dataset rather than the standardised totals above. For example, birds seen on August 12th and October 21st are still recorded, even though these dates fall outside the standardised season. At some point in the future, we will likely expand our window for ‘standardised’ counts to include our longer monitoring period (since 2019 we count from August 12th to October 21st), but for now we stick to the ‘old’ season for the standardisation.

How was this data collected and processed?

We have published a description of how count data were collected, managed, and processed for trend analyses in our data paper. Read the data paper in ZooKeys.