Recommended read: our 2025 Autumn Report is out! As part of our tradition and commitment, we’ve compiled a comprehensive overview of the season’s highlights and phenological peculiarities — complemented by many beautiful photos of both birds and people! 👉 batumiraptorcount.org/autumn-report-2025

📉 Our new paper shows Bewick’s Swan numbers in NW/NE Europe have fallen to ~12,900 birds - a 56.7% decline since 1995, with further losses predicted by 2026 unless survival or breeding success improves. Flyway-wide conservation is urgent. 🦢 Download paper > tidsskrift.dk/Wildfowl/art... #Ornithology

Take three minutes to look at pretty birds, explore radar data, and see how we connect the structure of skies to MacArthur's ideas of niche partitioning. 📡🐦☁️🎧

A typical Batumi migration scene, illustrating the idea of an ‘aerial niche’. For Steppe Buzzards in our bottleneck, that niche is often somewhere between the clouds: great to watch, tricky to count. Fascinating paper by @cnilsson.science et al: doi.org/10.1016/j.tr... 📸 @barthoekstra.bsky.social

filter_out() = yeet()

Dispersal, maturation and recruitment in a long-lived, intercontinental migrant bird | www.sciencedirect.co... | Animal Behaviour | #ornithology 🪶

To reduce negative impacts of #renewables (eg #windenergy) on migrating birds, we need to know *where* and how *high* they fly. Using weather radar, we mapped 6yrs of nocturnal migration over the Netherlands, revealing patterns we can use to avoid and minimize impacts: doi.org/10.1016/j.je... 🧪🪶

Halloween costume ideas for birders.

It’s a wrap! 🎉 Today marked the final day of #BRC17! What an unforgettable season it’s been: records broken with countless surprises and memories made. All the details will be included in our upcoming autumn report, which will be released soon. Keep an eye on our social media to stay up-to-date.

1.5 MILLION RAPTORS! 🦅🤯 For the first time in BRC history, we have recorded a staggering 1.5 million raptors in a single autumn season — a true milestone after 17 years of counting! Read more here: www.batumiraptorcount.org/brc17/2025/10/15-million-raptors #ornithology #RaptorResearch

Bird migration is changing. What does this reveal about our planet? – visualised

The latest wadertales blog (no. 151) describes how scoring moult from photographs can reveal moult season duration and how it varies between populations: wadertales.wordpress.com/2025/10/09/m... #ornithology

Live from the field! The 1,422,172nd bird — a juvenile Black Kite flying through the misty clouds — crossed our transect line this afternoon, making 2025 the BIGGEST year in BRC history!! Stay tuned for more!

🚨 Master’s project! Curious how birds find their way? 🧭🐦 Analyze decades of ringing data to study abnormal migratory routes and uncover what these deviations can reveal about the mechanisms guiding birds on their journeys. Drop me an email for details! #ornithology www.vogelwarte.ch/de/wir/mitar...

If conservationists work from a compromised baseline, our notions of abundance, scarcity, and ecological wellbeing will keep getting defined downward: "The researchers show that using the 1970s as a baseline tends to normalize an already severely degraded state." phys.org/news/2025-10...

170.000 RAPTORS IN ONE DAY! After yesterday’s heavy rain and a quiet morning, today the sky exploded with Steppe Buzzards and large eagles! Continuing from 10 am until almost the end of the count. At some point, we counted over 14.000 raptors in less than 20 minutes. THAT'S BATUMI! #ornithology

After the thrill of reaching the million, we went straight to the peak of diversity. The challenge of counting high numbers of birds slowly shifted into identifying the (relatively) fewer but more difficult ones: the large eagle species! But they also brought a special guest along...👇 1/2

I love the way science used to be written. Is it necessary to know that the author was pushing his baby in a pram while making observations of insects? Perhaps not, but it provides delightful context, while assuming the reader is familiar with his previously published baby-wheeling-related work.

NEW PUBLICATION on stopover ecology of Songbirds during spring migration: After packmor et al. 2020 (Mov Ecol) found that trans-Saharan migrants react differently to weather for migratory departure, we aked ourselves, whether this is also valid for spring migration? 🐦 a thread 🧵 on 7 hypotheses:

A dramatic end for an ambitious Spoonbill. Yday morning LAYLA crashed into the ocean just offshore Madeira, 56h after departing from the Wadden Sea. She rested barely 7h even though she found nice Spoonbill hotspots on the way. Poor choices... #ornithology www.globalflywaynetwork.org/tracks/speci...

A true Bluesky — filled with raptors! After days of rain, we were greeted by a bright, blue, cloudless sky this morning! The result? Thousands of birds and a high species diversity. With the main message: the eagles are coming! Stay tuned for more! For daily totals: www.batumiraptorcount.org/data

The www.BirdEyes.org team is thrilled to announce a new paper by Mohamed Henriques showing how Spoonbills change space use over the course of their summer stay in the eastern Dutch Wadden Sea. After breeding, many adults converge in the Lutjewad area. #ornithology www.birdeyes.org/lutjewad-amo...

Are animals randomly distributed in the air, or is there a structure to where and when we find them? In our new paper we outline factors that shape habitat use in the air, from abiotic structure to biotic interactions. A lot of fun discussions behind this one! 🦅🦋🦇🌬 www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

This achievement was only possible thanks to our amazing and hard-working team – counters, trainees, coordinators – and our wonderful host families for their endless hospitality. Check out our daily counts and news flashes here: www.batumiraptorcount.org/data 2/2

Here we go!!

#ornithology www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The Honey Buzzards keep on coming! With another 50K+ counted today, we’ve now passed half a million HBs this season! Rising numbers of Black Kites — as their peak is still ahead — pushed our overall total past 700K! And it’s not just the bulk species 👇 #ornithology 📸Eduardo C. Wals 1/2

Foremost, we found it an exciting experience to publish our scientific debate in such a public manner, and thank @moveandconserve.bsky.social and co-authors for the constructive and cordial discussion! Exciting times ahead — only together can we connect birds, people & places across the flyway!

A new study led by @moveandconserve.bsky.social used GPS tracking to test the monitoring potential of Eilat and Batumi. An invaluable step toward linking counted birds to their origins, but we found it needed some elaboration from a migration count perspective! Our commentary: tinyurl.com/nnbzu7kc

So they wrote a comment www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... They raised some good points, improving our initial work, and allowing us to address a few more aspects of our work @barthoekstra.bsky.social @tohar-tal.bsky.social @wmgvs.bsky.social #conservation #ornithology 🧪🐾🌎

Science as a conversation: In January, we published a paper about migratory bird counts www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... For different reasons, we did not include the managers of the bird counts. But the @batumiraptorcount.org people had some important comments #conservation #ornithology 🧪🐾🌎

Some asked if we had a ‘beef’ with Efrat et al. — quite the contrary! Their elegant work merited a proper response, so we wrote a letter to share our view on their work and long-standing Qs about migration counts. If the khachapuri doesn't get to us first, we still fit together through one door! 😁

Migration is a go! Yday 3 @globalflyway.bsky.social GPS-Spoonbills flew from 🇳🇱 to 🇫🇷. Among them were adults MIGUEL (orange) and STERN (purple) who met each other in flight at noon, and then flew together for 9h until they split up again south of Le Havre. www.globalflywaynetwork.org/tracks/speci...

Timmermans schuift aan in een talkshow:

Now onto the 1 million! Check out daily count updates and news flashes here: www.batumiraptorcount.org/data #RaptorResearch

Luckily, we have a great team of counters, trainees, and coordinators to count and identify the many thousands of raptors heading their way! Make sure to check out our daily count updates and season totals here: www.batumiraptorcount.org/data Stay tuned for more news from #BRC17! 3/3

HALF A MILLION RAPTORS! 🦅 After a few slower days (~30K+), #BRC17 hit the absolute jackpot yesterday! Around 11 am, the floodgates opened — massive streams of Honey Buzzards & Black Kites pushed us past 100K raptors in a single day! Bringing the season total to 540K😍 🧵1/3 Video by Zülfü Farajli

Earlier this week a paper dramatically reduced the realistic potential for forest carbon storage. Now another downgrades the capacity of geological storage. Emissions reductions are the only effective climate action.

This month, WaderTales will be ten years old. I'm going to create a thread that highlights some of the research findings that have surprised me. Plenty of "Wow!" & "I didn't know that!" moments. Here's a link to the catalogue of 150 blogs wadertales.wordpress.com/about/ #ornithology

In the upcoming week or so, we expect to count another 100-200K Honey Buzzards as we're moving towards the half a million raptors milestone. You can follow our daily count updates, all uploaded to the @trektellen.bsky.social platform, via our website: www.batumiraptorcount.org/data

The Honey Buzzards have well and truly arrived, so the first 296,911 have already been counted #BRC17 🪶. It's been a period of everything: rain, fog, blazing sun, and then suddenly the sky explodes with raptors in typical Batumi fashion. The team's report: www.batumiraptorcount.org/brc17/2025/8...

Hey #ornithology folks - lots of great talks by a wide range of folks from all over the world. I'll be talking about how we maintain hope at @adriftlab.bsky.social when our work is emotionally difficult. It's only £10 in person/£5 online (concessions available). Spread the word! #AvianOdyssey

We are so looking forward to this event coming up on Saturday 20th September: www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/... Journey into the wonderful world of birds with leading conservationists and ornithologists with a full day of inspiring talks at the Natural History Museum. Don't miss out!

Conservation status of Marbled Teal Marmaronetta angustirostris in Armenia and Türkiye | doi.org/10.1017/S095... | Bird Conservation International | #ornithology 🪶

🦢The International Swan Census involves counters to carry out a one-off count on the weekend of 17th-18th January 2026. This involves counting Whooper and Bewick’s Swans, as well as recording age assessments and habitat. Visit the vacant site map⬇️ app.bto.org/gsmp/public/... #Ornithology

How important is Iceland for waders? Take Dunlin, as an example ... ▪️Irish population ... c 30 pairs ▪️UK population ... c 9,500 pairs ▪️Icelandic population ... c 275,000 pairs More here in blog: wadertales.wordpress.com/2025/08/27/i... based on new paper by Verónica Méndez et al #UKbirding

A newly published study has documented in detail the status of Saker Falcon in the Caucasus region for the first time:

New distribution models for Icelandic waders show how temperate to arctic species overlap across climatic and environmental gradients. Led by Dr. Verónica Méndez nsojournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... @wildlifebiology.bsky.social #ornithology #waders #shorebirds #ConservationScience🌍

Buitengewoon ernstig dit. Onderzoeker @vlinderstichting.bsky.social @soortennl.nl met de dood bedreigd vanwege onderzoek naar #pesticiden. Het rapport is offline gehaald. www.gelderlander.nl/wageningen/o...