Crashed into the ocean... After being attracted to/trying to land at some kind of fish farm?

Very sad, of course, but secretly hugely interesting how this ended so badly, just less than a km offshore.

Rumex, tagged in 2022 at Schiermonnikoog (NL), decided to winter in the Tagus Estuary. As he spends most of his time at the intertidal around Sitio das Hortas, also my go-to birding spot, I've encountered him on multiple occasions in the past few weeks.

@globalflyway.bsky.social #birds #ornithology

Sunset visit to the Tagus ricefields to admire the Black-tailed Godwit roost site with @roelandbom.bsky.social. Aside from the >30.000 godwits, we stumbled upon a roost of around 700 Spoonbills after sunset.🤯

#birds #ornithology

A few pictures from the past month around Alcochete, Portugal—right by the iconic Tagus Estuary! Spoiler: lots of ringed birds! 😉

Meanwhile trying not to get too distracted from my project on flyway-scale habitat use of waders with João Belo at the EcoFlyway group!

#birds #ornithology

The drive back in the beautiful evening light was a real pleasure, especially with multiple fields still being actively plowed.

2/2

Last week I spent a great day with @wmgvs.bsky.social in the rice fields of the Tagus estuary!

While we registered a total of 80+ bird species - the absolute highlight was the aggregation of >30.000 Black-tailed Godwits!

#Ornithology
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Taking full advantage of this (rare) rainy day to edit some pics — here's the first one, special for you!

I haven’t counted how many there are yet, feel free to give it a shot 😉

Together with Aslan Bolkvadze and Alexander Rukhaia, I was invited to write a guest blog for OSME about the immense hunting pressure threatening migratory birds in the Chorokhi Delta, republic of Georgia.

Find out what's happening here ➡️ osme.org/2024/12/the-...

📸 @barthoekstra.bsky.social

Last but not least, I could not have done this work without my co-authors and friends @batumiraptorcount.bsky.social, and all the volunteers who participated in the spring counts! I also thank OSME
for their financial support and Gerard Troost of the www.trektellen.org platform.

9/9

Though we won’t continue spring migration surveys, our data provides a baseline to detect changes in raptor migration, supports conservation at Batumi, and confirms the Black Sea coast as a key flyway, redrawing the East African-Eurasian map for several Palearctic raptors!

8/9

Primarily, our figure below confirms a weaker geographic bottleneck effect in spring.

Among other things, we dive deeper into the potential role of within-season dynamics of environmental conditions and the differential effects on early- versus late-spring migrants.

7/9

Even though species diversity was similar between spring and autumn, for some, their abundance was up to an order of magnitude lower in spring📊👇

Our paper discusses different hypotheses that may explain the lower raptor abundance in spring.

6/9

During this period of the season, raptor migration could be extremely intense with tens of thousands of birds a day!

For instance, we counted over 100,000 raptors passing our watch site on April 1st, 2020!🤯

5/9

We show that on average 542,161 raptors (min. 455,799 - max. 618,848) — of 33 different species — migrated along the eastern Black Sea coast each spring.

Most birds passed from late March through mid-April, as seen in the median passage dates of the most common species📈👇

4/9

📢 NEW STUDY describing the first full-season spring raptor migration counts in the eastern Black Sea flyway!
Read about seasonal contrasts in raptor migration, the eastern Black Sea coast as a principal spring flyway, and more.

Preprint ➡️ biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

1/9🧵👇