To East along the foothills

Today we drove in eastern direction along the foothills by the road passed near the Big Almaty Channel. About the half of way is rather far from the foothills in the middle of dense roadside thickets of Asian Elm. Channel passes above the road and is visible all the time, below the road there are small villages, fields and the numerous nurseries of fruit and other trees. In winter time here possible to watch flocks of finches and thrushes, in summer time the nesting Wood Pigeons, Oriental Turtle Doves, Orioles, Penduline Tits etc. But most of these birds arrives in May to the green leaves, but now trees are without leaves and we watched only Wood Pigeons and not yet departed Black-throated Thrushes and Bramblings-Chaffinches.

The second half of the road passes close proximity of the foothills. There are a bit of trees, road is slightly swings in both horizontal and vertical planes in accordance with the terrain. Landscape is the low grass meadows with a lot of stones. There are Whetears, Pipits and Larks. We watched probably all of nesting birds of this area including Chukar Partridges and Pheasants. Some words about Wheatears, the Isabelline and Pied Wheatears are common here, sometimes white-throated Pied Wheaters (vittata morph) are recorded, and also today I saw one Northern Wheatear. It may be the passage migrant but about 10 years ago I recored one Northern Wheatear in summer time in the same location, therefore I can guess the nesting of this bird, but I am not sure of course. In this location there are some very interesting gorges which I never visited. Need to plan the special trip to these gorges.

The final destination of our trip is the large pool (mini lake) near Kyzylsharyk village. In this pool I always watch birds, at least Ruddy Shellducks and Lesser Ringed Plovers, but during migration the Wagtails too. Ruddy Shellducks probably nest every year in one of Ground Squirrels or Mormot holes near the pool. Today we watched in addition to the listed birds the Water Pipit and Greenish Sandpiper too. In vicinity of the pool I took photos of Isabelline Shrikes which we saw in road too. But we didn't see Turkestan Shrike today. Also we recorded one flying to SE Crane. We didn't recognize it but it was Common Crane in my opinion.