Trip to Chilik River.

Trip to the Chilik River with Oleg, Vassily and Nikolai Postnikov. Day is windy, cold and overcast in morning but sunny and warm after noon. The road was wet with ice patches in the day beginning but all dry when we came back. During all Kuldja Road almost until Chilik we saw thousand active Rooks and Jackdaws prepairing to migration. Near Chilik on the partialy covered by snow field the arrived Lapwings and Starlings were feeding, one of the features of the spring. In the thickets of floodplain of Chilik River there are a lot of birds which are not yet start to move to breeding spots and mostly were feeding by last-year berries of berberis and sea buckthorn bushes. During more than one hour birding we saw tens of Blackbirds and Black-throated Thrushes, Eversmann’s Redstarts which presented the majority of birds. Other species were observed by few single birds; of them we saw several Guldenstadt’s Redstart, two Red-mantled Rosefinches, Azure Tits, Black-throated Accentor, Waxwing. Some birds were feeding not only on bushes but on the open ground too.

On the back road we made a quick stop near Teskensu village. Though this spot is similar to each other parts of the road however we saw many birds during the half-hour staying here. We saw firstly birds of prey: two Steppe Eagles, male Merlin, Rough-legged Buzzard and probably Long-legged Buzzard; then about one handred Mistle Thrushes, two tens of Waxwings, more the dozen Yellowhammers, and single Black-throated Thrushes. Further the large flock (perhaps more than one hundred birds) of Lapwings flew by from the Kapchagai side.

Then we drove to Ekpendy village. We expected to view Common Cranes but saw Grey Herons which are sit in nest or are going to do it next time. Here we saw one White-tailed Sea-Eagle and also already arrived Desert Weatear and not yet departed Great Grey Shrike.