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!