Tour Diary - Migration at Batumi, Georgia - private tour

Using the button below read our Tour Diary from our recent private tour to Batumi, Georgia to watch the autumn raptor migration. To give you a taste here is a summary below…

14-22 September 2025

Batumi is strategically positioned in the southwestern corner of Georgia. The city sits along the eastern shore of the Black Sea, approximately 20 kilometres north of the Turkish border, making it a crucial gateway between Europe and Asia and occupies a narrow coastal plain between the Black Sea and the foothills of the Lesser Caucasus Mountains. The surrounding topography is characterized by a subtropical landscape, with the Caucasus Mountains rising dramatically just inland from the coast and in the process creating a natural bottleneck that concentrates the movement of millions of birds, especially raptors through this narrowing. The Batumi Raptor Count (BRC) is a remarkable wildlife conservation initiative that monitors one of the world's most spectacular bird migration phenomena. Over 1,000,000 migrating raptors pass through this bottleneck each autumn making it one of the most impressive raptor migration routes globally.

This tour was timed to run over the middle of the main raptor migration period which generally offers the greatest diversity of species through the season, and it didn’t disappoint. Over the week we logged tens of thousands of raptors of twenty-two species, not to mention over 100 additional species. Highlights were close fly-bys from Pallid Harriers and Honey Buzzards, streams of Black Kites and Steppe Buzzards, a plethora of eagles, an abundance of Hobby’s, some incredible Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters, not to mention a continual stream of European Bee-eaters, Rollers and Golden Orioles. Along the coast we found a plethora of terns and gulls which allowed great comparison and an unexpected passage of Arctic Skuas was impressive. This was all complemented by some beautiful subtropical forest dripping with life and all wrapped up with the unbelievable hospitality that Georgians offer meaning we had to be rolled back into the UK at the end of the tour. Overall, a week of pure migration magic.