Birding Azerbaijan: Bird Camp Besh Barmag April 2017

Freitag, 12. Mai 2017

Bird Camp Besh Barmag April 2017

Text © Pia Fetting

Between the 21st and 23rd of April, the meanwhile second larger international Bird Camp at the famous Besh Barmag bottleneck in Azerbaijan took place. Like the last Bird Camp in September 2016 it was again gratefully and excellent organised by NatureFriends Azerbaijan, SOF BirdLife (the Swedish BirdLife partner) and AOS (Azerbaijan Ornithological Society, the Azeri BirdLife partner). The initiative this year was sponsored by the Georgian tour operator Batumi Birding as well as BirdLife Switzerland. The group, composed of 21 Azeris, four Swedes and four Germans, spent three days with camping, bird watching and demonstrations of bird ringing in that indeed very special area. In addition, the bird camp this year was documented by both a reporter/photographer team from Baku Magazine as well as a documentary film crew that will produce a short promotional documentary about the camp. Exciting!

Group photo of the bird camp © Emin Mamedov

The programme was enhanced by talks and presentations on its discovery and recent scientific research of this bottleneck. Furthermore, the bird camp was joined on the Saturday by an AOS-lead excursion and the incoming three bus loads totalling about 80 additional visitors was clear evidence of the high interest among local students in the bird migration research in this area.

Unfortunately, as a result of some rain and strong winds, migration was rather slow during the three observation days. Nevertheless, birdwatching in the vicinity of the camp was much fun and produced a total of 115 species including 17 raptor species. Some 75 Black Kites, 15 Black Vultures and 50 Lesser Kestrel soaring the rubbish dump together with single Steppe and Eastern Imperial Eagles and Pallid, Montagu´s and Marsh Harriers as well as Merlins and Hobbys on migration. Four Dalmatian Pelicans and mixed flocks of waders flew north along the coastline as did a few Citrine Wagtails and Tawny Pipits. In the beautiful green and flowering steppes different subspecies of Yellow Wagtails, Black-winged and Collared Pratincoles and a single male Little Bustard were observed. The colourful species, such as Ortolan Bunting, Hoopoe and European Bee-eaters, were a regular sight joined by a single migrating Blue-cheeked Bee-eater. In the bushes by the camp we saw and heard Green and Menetriés Warbler, Scops Owl and Woodchat Shrike. The rather low results of the migration counts can be checked at trektellen.org (http://trektellen.org/count/view/1533/20170422).

Despite the slightly unpleasant weather conditions, the bird camp was a happy reunion of familiar faces and a motivating meeting of new acquaintances. The gathering of the many bird enthusiast lead to several discussions and chats about bird migration, bird identification, scientific methods and so on. Also future plans were discussed including the possible construction of a bird watching shelter and the development of this site for bird tourism and the establishment of scientific monitoring programmes. For the coming autumn migration season several projects being planned, so stay tuned!