BRC 2019: October Photo Report
I’ve recently returned to The Netherlands from 85 amazing days in Georgia, coordinating the 12th season of the Batumi Raptor Count. It has been a fantastic, unforgettable season!
Like last year, I have decided to simply compile the best and/or most interesting photos per month from when I arrived on August 6th til when I left the country on October 26th. Identification pointers for photos are added frequently so counters for future seasons can ‘pre-prepare’ by going through the photos as well. Apologies for the large photos and a page that will probably load pretty slow. I hope the wait is worth it…
Contrary to September, there were lots of opportunities to photograph birds. Migration in October is fairly calm, with relatively few birds, resulting in much less ‘coordination’ work in this month and thus more opportunities for photos. In the end, I have made many thousands of photos — especially of the large eagles — that I will not yet display here, but that I will share at some point in the future in some species galleries somewhere else on this website. For now, a quick-’n-dirty selection will have to do. Enjoy!
The most complete overview of the past season, which will also go into detail about things not photographed, can be found in the Autumn Report of 2019 published on the BRC website.
I recommend going through the photo reports in chronological order:
October Photo Report
October 1st. A juvenile Honey Buzzard.
October 1st. Another juvenile Honey Buzzard, this time a very well-marked individual.
October 1st. By this time in the season, if you see a non-juvenile Honey Buzzard, there’s almost a guarantee something is wrong with the bird. This one has been shot in the left wing…
October 1st. A juvenile Hen Harrier. Ageing (and thus sexing) of female-colored birds in this species is genuinely hard. One of the most important things to look for is the barring in the arm: it is always very distinct in adult females, but fainter in juveniles. There is some overlap and then it helps to look at the width of the dark trailing edge to the hand: it’s just marginally less wide in the arm vs. the hand in juveniles, but most often substantially narrower in the hand than the arm in adult females.
October 2nd. Finally, an adult male Pallid Harrier on a photo!
October 4th. Black Storks in between the stations.
October 6th. Usually the skies more or less clear up in October, but not this year. Most days our visibility was ridden with intense haze, resulting in almost black-and-white light conditions. This photo is a perfect example of that, but has not been converted to black-and-white, it’s full-colour in fact. It’s good our counters become experts at identifying species from silhouettes. :-)
October 7th. It’s remarkable how invisible local birds remain on days with intense migration (that is, for most of August and September). When migration slows down in the bottleneck and fewer birds pass, Hooded Crows and local Ravens take to the skies again more prominently.
October 10th. Nice view on the upperside of a juvenile Black Kite. The strangely lit patch on the left upperwing is an indication of something bad though: this bird is injured…
October 7th. An immature ‘fulvescens’-type Greater Spotted Eagle. Unfortunately very high up…
October 8th. A juvenile Short-toed Eagle. Interesting how far the secondaries protrude beyond the primaries in this bird…
October 10th. Juvenile Lesser Spotted (right) and juvenile Greater Spotted Eagle (left).
October 10th. Juvenile Lesser Spotted (right) and juvenile Greater Spotted Eagle (left). Same birds as previous.
October 10th. Lovely juvenile Greater Spotted Eagle, with a sublime body plumage: a perfect color transition from head to undertail.
October 10th. Crappy record-shot of a very — very — distant ‘fulvescens’-type Greater Spotted Eagle. You’re looking at the upperwing of the bird. Very striking…
October 10th. Very strongly-marked juvenile Aquila. Head-on this bird gave the impression of an approaching Steppe Eagle with these pale streaky crown-feathers (for some reason the paler nape patch was not visible). Unfortunately this bird was only seen gliding, so it didn’t show much, but I’d be tempted to call it ‘mostly a Lesser’, as it’s difficult to exclude the option of some GSE genes.
October 10th. Same bird as previous (the ‘mostly Lesser’). Quite well-marked upperparts with fairly broad white tips to the trailing edge, greater as well as the median coverts. It’s difficult to judge anything else.
October 11th. ‘Small Momma’ with a thin veil of clouds.
October 11th. Adult Steppe Eagle.
October 11th. Subadult Steppe Eagle, here clearly showing the grey cast to the upperwing.
October 11th. Subadult Steppe Eagle. Same bird as previous.
October 11th. Juvenile Steppe Eagle.
October 11th. Juvenile Steppe Eagle, same bird as previous.
October 11th. A juvenile ‘Black Kite’ of the Batumi-type, an intergrade of western and eastern populations of Black(-eared) Kites, with blue-ish bare parts.
October 11th. An immature (2cy) Greater Spotted Eagle and a Steppe Buzzard.
October 12th. The best evening I spent counting this season. Totally on my own, well after the count had officially finished (2 hours before sunset) there was still a flock of 40 large eagles hanging around in the saddle, looking for a place to roost. It’s incredible to be able to witness that on your own, knowing that the spectacle is unfolding without anyone paying attention to it…
October 13th. An immature Greater Spotted Eagle. Probably 3rd calendar year, given just a bit more than half the secondaries are replaced and 2 moult-fronts are visible in the primaries.
October 13th. An adult Short-toed Eagle.
October 14th. A visit of a Krüper’s Nuthatch to the station marked the start of the best day of the 2019 Season.
October 14th. A juvenile White-tailed Eagle passed in our overhead.
October 14th. And so did a juvenile Imperial Eagle…
October 14th. And an adult Imperial Eagle…
October 14th. And a juvenile Griffon Vulture…
October 14th. The absolute highlight of the day, however, were the incredible number of Steppe Eagles. By the end of the day we had counted 70 of them, a new BRC record. Because 90% of the birds passed very close to us, and the light was perfect to assess wing-barring, identification was a breeze and it was: So. Much. Fun. — An adult Steppe Eagle on this picture.
October 14th. Another adult Steppe Eagle.
October 14th. A very — very — pale adult Steppe Eagle, though I have no idea how to exclude Tawny Eagle as an option here. The bird appeared very light greyish-brown in the field, but the photos are nowhere near good enough to assess the barring unfortunately. And then there’s lots variation within African and Indian Tawny Eagle populations as well…
October 14th. An adult Steppe Eagle approaching…
October 14th. Photo-compilation of the adult Steppe Eagle showing both nicely the upper- and underparts. Same bird as previous.
October 14th. An adult Lesser Spotted Eagle. By this time in the season the LSEs are in the minority and they become the cherries amongst Greater Spotteds and Steppe Eagles.
October 14th. An immature Greater Spotted Eagle, probably a >3cy bird, with very clear carpal flashes.
October 16th. Boom! Out of nowhere an adult male Crested Honey Buzzard showed up and gave a very close flyby. P5 is still growing in this bird, so it is fairly short, but it nicely shows how moult of the primaries is more progressed in this species than in European Honey Buzzards.
October 16th. Same bird as previous. A remarkable record: the latest Crested ever recorded by BRC. The previous latest ever was in 2018 when a Crested was seen on the 11th of October.
October 16th. Another highlight of this day: a vulture, and a black one at that!
October 16th. Eurasian Black Vulture/Cinereous Vulture, a juvenile and a very rare record for BRC as this is only the 6th ever.
October 16th. Nicely flying in-between stations.
October 16th. An immature (2cy) Steppe Eagle flying over the village of Shuamta.
October 16th. Same bird as previous.
October 16th. Same bird as previous.
October 17th. Juvenile (probably female) Hen Harrier.
October 17th. A juvenile Honey Buzzard flying through the bottleneck.
October 17th. Another juvenile Honey Buzzard. This time with truly ridiculously bulging secondaries…
October 17th. Fairly strange Marsh Harrier. Probably a male (proportionately that fits) and in that case it must be an adult dark morph, but usually the pale patch on the underwing of dark morphs is complete. Here it is broken with the dark coloration extending all the way to the base of the feathers in P5-8.
October 17th. Same bird as previous.
October 18th. Sunrise over ‘Big Ginger’.
October 18th. Caucasian Viper on Station 2.
October 18th. An immature male Pallid Harrier with retained juvenile secondaries.
October 18th. Some Greater Spotted Eagles are so square-shaped, it’s almost comical. Here (what must be) an adult female.
October 18th. When they turn, however, that impression can change rapidly. This is the same bird as previous.
October 18th. ‘What a striking crown! That must at least be a Steppe…’
October 19th. ‘Oh, nevermind.’ Same bird as previous: an old immature/subadult Greater Spotted Eagle.
October 19th. At a quick glance it’s likely this bird would be aged as a non-juvenile, but in fact this is merely a well-marked and slightly rough looking juvenile, showing absolutely no signs of moult, lacking distinct barring in the flight feathers and a dark trailing edge.
October 19th. An immature Greater Spotted Eagle. Probably a 2cy, but I cannot exclude a somewhat retarded 3cy.
October 19th. Same bird as previous. Right hand suggests two moult-fronts, which would indicate a 3cy, but I’m not sure if the left hand does the same. Quite many secondaries have been replaced for a 2cy, but quite few for a 3cy?
October 21st. High-key photo of a juvenile Short-toed Eagle, an unintended side-effect of a bird flying almost right in front of the sun.
October 21st. Part of a nice and dense flock of Wood Pigeons moving through the bottleneck. The French counters on station were ecstatic…
October 25th. An adult (male?) Goshawk. During the season we have only seen a few Goshawks. Most were juveniles, but in the last days of the count a few adults finally showed up.
October 25th. And that’s how we end the photos of this season: with a soaring juvenile Greater Spotted Eagle — the nicest of all large eagles — and the city of Kobuleti in the distance.