Counting a Million Migrating Birds at Besh Barmag

Besh Barmag, a coastal bottleneck between the Greater Caucasus and the Caspian Sea, funnels millions of migrating birds each autumn because they won't cross open water or high mountains. Birding Azerbaijan runs the annual Besh Barmag Bird Migration Count there, training and hosting local counters who tallied 854,312 birds moving south over just 20 days in the autumn 2024 count, including roughly 40,000 Little Bustards and 43,000 ducks. The project builds a local community of bird and nature conservationists in Azerbaijan while pushing to establish the site as a long-term monitoring station and future bird observatory.