December 5th, 2025
Falling leaves, migrating birds and our 3rd complete list challenge weekend in SE Europe
This autumn, partners from 13 countries in SE Europe (Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovenia) organised a simultaneous complete list challenge weekend to boost participation and more standardised data collection in the region. This is a third such weekend challenge in 2025, which coincided with the EuroBirdwatch dates (5-6th October), enabling partners to use the synergies and promote the collection of complete lists along with outings planned for public.
In Albania, two partners organised separate events, with AOS organising a field activity at Divjaka-Karavasta National Park with 20 high school students the day prior to the weekend, which included guided bird observations and stressing the importance of structured data collection. The second partner, PPNEA, postponed the planned event in Fllaka lagoon for the second weekend, due to weather conditions, where 3 volunteers had the chance to collect complete lists and observe some interesting species, such as Whimbrel, Grey Plover and Common Redshank.
In Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ornithological Society "Naše ptice", focused the challenge on systematic bird recording within Hutovo blato, one of the country’s most important wetland habitats where 17 enthusiastic participants documented a variety of resident and migratory species. After the main survey in Hutovo blato, participants continued to a short excursion to Lakševine near Mostar, adding further observations to the day’s bird lists and expanding coverage to a different habitat type. In Bulgaria, Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds (BSPB) organized seven events in five cities across the country and their surroundings. A total of 71 participants took part in the activities. All complete lists were recorded in BSPB’s mobile application SmartBirds, with 12 complete lists submitted in total. Some of the interesting observations during the events included Arctic diver, Glossy Ibis, Eurasian Spoonbill, Red-footed Falcon, and Steppe Eagle.
In Croatia, BIOM organised two events prior to the weekend, connected to the participants of BirdID programmes, which also served a purpose of explaining the importance of complete list collection. For the weekend challenge, they held a birdwatching tour with 28 attendees of different level on bird knowledge identification, showcasing the complete list data entry in the NaturaList application. In Greece, HOS used the opportunity to combine the challenge into two consecutive weekends, as the second October Saturday was eBird’s Big Day in autumn. Their strategy seems to paid off as 387 complete checklists were uploaded over the two weekends, a marked 26% increase compared to last year, with 33% more eBirders on the Big Day alone. HOS also provided a list of eBirders with exceptional attendance of complete lists, and randomly selected 10% to give away gifts – in the form of books such as birding guides which was met with a lot of enthusiasm.
In Kosovo, KOS organised a series of field activities on October 4–5, 2025, at Gërmia Park, Prishtina focusing on the collection of complete bird lists. Participants included students from Primary School “Pavarësia”, representatives of the NGO “Biodiversiteti”, as well as local nature enthusiasts and wildlife photographers. In Romania, Milvus, has promoted the challenge on-line and as a result of the challenge, there were 19 complete lists uploaded in their database, OpenBird Maps.
Overall, you can follow the progress of the campaign in the region through the SEELists website, which shows basic development in the number of complete lists and observers in the last decade, as well as phenology graph of selected species in the SE Europe.
We wish to thank all partners for their activities and do not forget: Every bird counts and in SE Europe even double!
