BIRDING MONGOLIA

First Birding 2016

text & photos by ABu

Common Starling, record shot

below Songino Khairkhan Uul, UB, Jan 2016

Since the very frustrating days in November (see here) I had not been out to check the area below Songino Khairkhan Uul. So I was quite pleased when I received a phone call from Amarkhuu on 2 Jan 2016 inviting me for a short trip to one of our standard birding sites the next day. Off we went early morning, and, before sunrise Amarkhuu, Ariuka and I were out birding. Or we rather just tried birding. It was very tough to walk through the mega thick fog at a chilly minus 27°C (minus 16.6°F) with almost no birds on show. A first for the site was a single Eurasian Treecreeper (seen only by Abu though), but the dim light (thick fog plus a cloudy sky and a layer of ice on the lens) prevented even half decent photos. This is unfortunately all too obvious in the pictures accompanying this text. Despite the well showing bird I achieved only a single acceptable shot.

The Common Starling that we found, this time a male, was too shy and disappeared quickly so we could only document it with our cameras. This record constitutes only the second winter record for Mongolia, the first-a female-had been seen at the very same spot in January 2015 (see here). Else we saw 12 Bohemian Waxwings (comparatively few), 10 Hawfinches (comparatively few), a single Chaffinch, 14 Daurian Jackdaws, 22 Asian Azure-winged Magpies, 3 Great Tits, 1 White-backed Woodpecker, 6 or 7 Ruddy Shelducks, several each of Northern Raven, Common Magpie, Oriental Crow and a female Red-throated Thrush.

It seems that this winter brought extremely few birds down from the north. Fellow birders reported similar low bird numbers from the forest as well as the steppe or, with other words: everywhere there is almost nothing to see.

We will try harder then, so stick around, I am sure we will find something better…