Decade summary #4 - Best of 2013

2013 was such a busy year for me that I had to break up the annual summary into two parts (Jan-Jun and Jul-Dec). Early in the year I visited UK and NL, where I experienced proper wild goose chasing for the first time, including this smart Black Brant on the island of Zeeland:

I spent much of the spring doing breeding atlas work on Mt. Hermon that produced fascinating stuff, like this perfect Western Rock Nuthatch:

In June I returned to eastern Turkey with Amir and Gidon. Birding was great, with highlight being the beautiful Grey-necked Bunting:

Rarities came in thick and fast, including Yellow-billed Stork, Lesser Sand-plover (4th record), Pintail Snipe, and a first for Israel, Snow Bunting, that proved to be most obliging until it ended up in the talons of a Kestrel...

On the human front, in 2013 I was lucky to spend inspirational time with the late Martin Garner, in the UK and in Israel.

Kazakhstan - Sogety Valley

One of the better mornings we had during our Rockjumper 'Best of Central Asia' tour was spent in Sogety Valley, in south east Kazakhstan, close to the border triangle with China and Kyrgyzstan. This arid upland valley, and the surrounding hills and mountains, host some brilliant birds. We spent quite a bit of time on the plains, searching for our big target - Pallas's Sandgrouse.

Personally, Pallas's Sandgrous was one of my most-wanted birds. It seems that recently they have become more difficult, and sadly we failed to find any. I guess more time is needed for them. But even without those sandgrouse, birding was superb. The plains held good numbers of Brandt's Horned Larks:

And few of the famous duo - Desert Wheatear and Asian Desert Warbler, so often seen together:

Desert Wheatear

Asian Desert Warbler

We then headed up towards the hills, where a small spring attracts many birds. It took us a while to reach the spring because our attention was drawn towards several singing Grey-necked Buntings on the hills. The local subspecies neobscura is much duller than cerrutti I saw in E Turkey several years ago, and their song is different. Great birds to see - especially when they are so confiding.

Eventually we made it to the spring and sat down at a safe distance, not to disturb the birds. It was very busy - during the hour or so we were there we had big numbers of Mongolian Finch, several shy Asian Crimson-winged Finches, Rock Sparrows, more Grey-necked Buntings, Black-bellied Sandgrouse - huge fun. 

A pair of Turkestan Shrikes feeding young nearby made lots of noise.

eBird checklist of Sogety Valley and hills is here.

We then headed south towards Temirliq. At Temirliq River a pair of Lesser Grey Shrikes, and a pair of White-crowned Penduline Tits, were nest-building:

Up towards the mountain pass, in a lush rocky gully, we had Meadow Bunting, Siberian Stonechat and a few other birds.

We then headed back towards Almaty, via the impressive Charyn Canyon:

Turkey day 4 - buchanani!

Our final morning in E Turkey was very short and sweet. We flew out of Van at noon, and we had to wash and return our rental car on time, so that left little time for birding. We headed off early towards the 'famous' valley about 45 minutes SE of Van, following a tip from Tor Olsen via Silas. Took road D975 until we passed beyond Zernek Baraji. We parked the car beside the main road ( 38.342960°N  43.757780°E), and started walking east. The secondary river (don't know its name), convering into the larger river (Zernek I think), was roaring and was very noisy, so we climbed up the top of the southern ridge and walked on the top, above the river, in order to be able to hear something. The first minutes were rather quiet bar a pair of noisy Ruddy Shelducks that flew around. But very soon we picked up our first Grey-necked Bunting - a pair feeding in the nest. Eventually we had in a small area four pairs, all quite close to each other, all very busy with breeding activity. I was so happy to see them - I have been looking for them in Israel for so many years now. They breed so close to Israel but still have never been reocrded in Israel yet - I suppose they get overlooked among the huge numbers of Ortolans and Cretzschmar's we get here on migration. I was surprised how distinctive they are, even the females. Craking birds!

Grey-necked Bunting - male

Song:

Calls:

Grey-necked Bunting - female - unfortunately I don't have better images

While watching the buntings we also had some Mongolian Finches - first again some flyover views but eventually we got a pair on the deck. Pretty brief and pretty distant, but good enough views. Crap record shots though. Need to improve that next time...

Mongolian Finch - male

Mongolian Finch - female

Song:

This is special habitat, very arid, possibly as a result of overgrazing and soil degredation.

We had many more good birds around - a pair of Trumpeter Finches, Finsch's Wheatears, Western Rock Nuthatches. A pair of Semi-collared Flycathcers was breeding in the riparian forest on the other side of the river. This valley was in fact the first place in Turkey we had any reptiles at all - quite many Caucasian Agamas and some fast lizards I wasn't able to identify.

Caucasian Agama (Laudakia caucasia)

Not sure - I think this is Balkan Marbled White (Melanargia larissa):

We saw further east and south some very interesting habitats - wet valleys and wetlands, but we had no time to explore the area. Very beautiful landscape.

We headed back to Van, had breakfast and flew out to Istanbul. We had some hours to kill around Istanbul - traffic was too heavy to head into the city so we went to the beach for some seafood, and then back home.

To conclude, this was a great little trip. For three days on the ground I think we did pretty well (131 species, without a proper wetland), and managed not to get our wives and bosses too pissed by disappearing for only a short while. We found Turkey very pleasent, very beautiful, good roads, friendly people and nice food. Many thanks to my partners during this trip, Amir and Gidon. We had a great time together and had lots of laughs. They were excellent birding (Gidon) and photography (Amir) companions. Looking forward to our next trip together.

Thanks also to Silas Olofson, Emin Yoğurtcuoğlu and Michael Opitz for their valuable help in planning this trip.