Kazakhstan

A bit different this week as I have just returned from a brilliant birding trip to Kazakhstan. Nearly 200 species logged in eight days. We covered a wide range of habitats from desert to steppe to high mountains and all in glorious sunshine…

Here's a small selection of the birds seen...

Lammergeier and Long-legged Buzzard, two of the twenty-one species of birds of prey seen (although pick for me was a magnificent Saker falcon).

It's also a great country for shrikes with five species seen. Turkestan Shrikes were particularly numerous...

but my favourite was Long-tailed Shrike...

The mountains were particularly good. The Great Almaty Lake lies at about 2500m...

The really sought after species here is a unique wader, the Ibisbill. They are hard to spot as they mimic the colours of their habitat but we were lucky enough to find one...

The Juniper and Tien Shan spruce forests around the lake held birds like Himalayan Rubythroat...

and Eversmann's Redstart...

and higher (up to 11,000 feet) we found Himalayan Snowcock, Guldenstadt's Redstart (hopping around in the snow!) both Mountain Finches and both Altai and this superb Brown Accentor...

There were also some very familiar birds but of the local subspecies such as this bactriana race Magpie with it's extra long tail...

this very pale and well marked 'hafizi' form of Nightingale 

the 'halimodendri' form of Lesser Whitethroat...

and this cracking Masked Wagtail (the same species as our Pied Wag)

and plenty of birds we are familiar with but showing particularly well like Temminck's Stint...

and Nightjar...

Hard to choose a favourite but one candidate would be White-winged Lark as it was such an unexpected find...

If you ever get a chance to go, grab it!

12th May

The year list continues to slowly grow. I had Swift over the river last weekend and the first ‘screaming’ ones yesterday evening with about ten birds over the house. This Garden Warbler was singing by the river at Morton last Saturday…

They are a scarce breeder in the parish and seem to be almost exclusively confined to hawthorns by the Swale.

The Yellow Wagtail is one of my favourite summer visitors. Nationally they have declined significantly but they keep a toe-hold in the parish, mainly in the sheep pasture along the river. Like a lot of birds they have been late in arriving but I had a pair today…

And I also added Common Sandpiper, although it was so flighty that I only managed this single very distant shot…

Also along the river I had six Cormorant, a Little Egret, four Oystercatchers, four Corn Buntings, three singing Reed Buntings but only two Whitethroats and a single Willow Warbler…

As well as a few common Birds of prey with eight Buzzards..

four of these were in a ‘kettle’ with a Sparrowhawk and Kestel…

6th May

Another beautiful day today, with light south-easterlies I really expected a significant arrival of summer migrants but still no real sign of this. Highlight was this cracking Tawny Owl roosting pretty much out in the open in the Magic Garden.

Yesterday John and Beryl came and set up their mist nets in the Garden. This reinforced the view that birds are very late with only a single Whitethroat, three Blackcaps, four Chiffchaffs  and three Willow Warblers representing the summer visitors. This Willow was carrying a ring which wasn’t John’s so will be interesting to see where this has come from…

Two of the Blackcaps were ringed here last year…

In fact there were about a dozen re-traps in all, including three birds caught in succession who were carrying sequential ring numbers from last year. Not sure what the odds on that would be!

But this Treecreeper was unringed…

As was this Goldcrest…

In the end it was an early finish as a breeze blew up and turned the nets from virtually invisible…

To impossible to miss…

I can’t talk about yesterday without mentioning the Tour De Yorkshire which came through the village yesterday.  what a fantastic event…