Miscellaneous

I’ll be in Russia for several days, and later in July on a longer field trip. Next posting: ??? But please visit again! And please contribute: Your observations and photos are always welcome on Birding Mongolia.


07 Jun 2007, Khovd

After a week in Ulaanbaatar (and before leaving again) I found just one hour to have a walk in one of Khovd’s plantations. The area is alive with juvenile Masked Wagtails, wheatears, and many Hoopoe families. A surprise was a singing Pallas’s Grasshopper Warbler in high grass/willow coppice – only my second observation in Khovd. A young Barbary Falcon showed briefly, presumably the same bird I had seen already on 15 June.


Juvenile Isabelline Shrike. Photo © A. Braunlich

05 Jun 2007, Gachuurt (21 km E of Ulaanbaatar)

A very brief (non-birding) visit to this village at the Tuul river resulted mainly in observations of corvids with their noisy offspring: Magpies, Red-billed Choughs, and Daurian Jackdaws. At a gravel bar a family of Goosanders took a nap. Other birds seen included Common Sandpiper and Little Ringed Plover, both species breeding here. A nice bonus was an adult male Amur Falcon, a species which I don’t see in western Mongolia.


Goosanders, Gachuurt. Photo © A. Braunlich


Pacific Swifts, Ulaanbaatar. Photo © A. Braunlich

Drought

I mentioned in a recent post about a bird survey in Khar Us Nuur National Park that it has been very dry in western Mongolia and that water levels were very low everywhere, due to an extremely dry spring. Recently I heard that the Zavkhan river, one of Mongolia’s large rivers, is partly dry…


Zavkhan river, 03 Jul 2007.
Photo © A. Braunlich

Axel