Back in early 2020 I booked a holiday with 'Naturetrek' to visit Georgia, to witness the raptor migration and to enjoy exploring the area around the Black Sea coastal city of Batumi looking for some of the special birds that live in or pass through the area. The trip was twice postponed because of Covid, but eventually, on 19 September, it was 'all systems go'. An overnight flight saw our bleary-eyed party of six finally arrive in Batumi late on the morning of the 20th. After ditching luggage at our hotel, it was straight up into the Lower Caucasus mountains to 'Watch Point One', which we were to visit twice more on the holiday. We had been promised the sight of hundreds or maybe thousands of Steppe buzzards migrating south past the watch point in the blurb, but it soon became obvious that the dominant species was black kite, with 'kettles' of 100+ birds passing through. Honey buzzards were also much in evidence, with small numbers of Steppe buzzards, black storks, common and Levant sparrowhawks and a handful of short-toed and booted eagles coming through. Smaller birds on migration included bee-eaters and rollers. A handful of passerines in the area included spotted flycatchers and a green warbler, the only one that was seen on the holiday.
Bee-eater in Flight, Watch Point One, Batumi
When we arrived in Batumi, the one couple on the holiday (Ken and Sarah) revealed that, between them, they had managed to bring two tripods, a telescope and camera with a ginormous 500mm lens with them. At first, I was sceptical of whether all this hardware was necessary. However, when I saw the quality of the images of birds in flight that Ken was producing, my own efforts with my Nikon D7500 and 100-400mm zoom lens were made to look very poor. Basically, there always seemed to be thick cloud cover and my camera/lens combination just wasn't letting in enough light, even when I over-exposed by two stops. Consequently, the raptors, large but usually distant birds, appeared as silhouettes with little feather detail. Lightening revealed lots of noise and rendered the images useless except (in some cases) for identification purposes. The image of the juvenile honey buzzard (below) was a rare exception.
Juvenile Honey Buzzard, Watch Point One, Batumi
Whilst the holiday was overall interesting and enjoyable, it was marred by two factors - the weather and hunting. Of course, there is nothing you can do about the weather, but we were unlucky to visit Batumi in a week when copious amounts of heavy rain fell, meaning that we effectively lost a day to the weather and were unable to participate in all the planned activities. When it wasn't raining there was quite a lot of dull, gloomy weather, although at least this did tend to create opportunities for 'falls' of migrating passerines throughout the week. Hunting is a major problem in Georgia. Shooting was going on all around us as soon as we were out of the city, with hunters coming quite close to us and shooting at the same birds that we were watching. One particularly distressing example of this was on a visit to a river estuary. On the other side of the estuary, we saw a black-winged stilt and an avocet, close to the far shore - the only members of these species that we saw on the holiday. A few minutes later, another bird watching group witnessed both birds being shot by a hunter. The stilt was killed instantly, whilst the avocet had part of its bill removed and a badly damaged wing, meaning that it would have been unable to feed or fly. The bird was swept across the estuary to our side, where it had to be euthanised by the guide. There are so many unlicenced hunters in Georgia that it seems that there is little that the authorities can do. They don't kill for food, but seemingly for 'pleasure' - something that I just can't get my head around.
Squacco Heron in Flight, near Batumi
We made two visits to 'The Boulevard', near the centre of Batumi on the Black Sea coast. The trees in this park form a welcome resting place for passerines travelling along or across The Black Sea on migration. On our first visit, we had been told about a nightjar that was resting on a park light in the centre of The Boulevard. As in the UK, when a nightjar is found resting during the day it will stay in the same place, provided it is not approached too closely, before flying away and likely continuing its migration once night falls. Having seen and photographed this nightjar, we managed to find three more nightjars roosting in nearby trees! Clearly The Boulevard is nightjar heaven! Other passerines found here on our visits included spotted (lots) and red-breasted flycatchers, wryneck, common redstarts, willow warblers and lesser whitethroats.
Nightjar Roosting on a Light Fitting, Batumi Boulevard
The poor weather meant that we didn't see a great variety of invertebrates or mammals (other than the feral dogs that were everywhere!). Butterflies seen included painted lady (seen every day) and long-tailed blue. On the final day, when the sun finally came out, silver-washed fritillaries were seen in the woods adjacent to Watch Point One and one member of our group also saw a bath white. However, lots of red-veined darter dragonflies were seen in large numbers nearly everywhere we went - they really were very common.
Female Red-veined Darter, Watch Point Two, Batumi
Other bird watching highlights on the holiday included seeing a blue-cheeked bee-eater (a 'first' in Georgia for our guide and a 'lifer' for me). My other holiday 'lifers' were oriental turtle dove and the crested honey buzzard mentioned below. We had success at a Kruper's nuthatch site and saw white-winged, black and Caspian terns. At the watch points we saw, in addition to the 'usual suspects', two ospreys, a handful of lesser spotted eagles (we were too early for the larger eagles), a crested honey buzzard, a single white stork and (something I wasn't prepared for) flocks of tree pipits. However, for me the bird of the holiday was nightjar. On our second visit to The Boulevard, we witnessed no fewer than four individuals coming in off the (Black) sea! I even have one or two half decent photos of them, but I'll finish with an image of a different bird - a juvenile collared pratincole. I haven't done justice to what Batumi is like as a place in this article - that will have to wait for another time.
Juvenile Collared Pratincole, near Batumi
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