Goodbye, Winter!

Together with Oleg and Anara we travelled to lowland to north from Almaty. Ten days ago the fields were snow-covered, but today we sometimes saw the first green grass. Ten days ago the main birds were Harriers and Owls, but today the Larks. In Almaty winter and summer is rotated almost discretely. Yesterday was winter, tomorrow will be summer.

Th lowland itinerary around Almaty means the numerous of Larks and Birds of prey. We made the first stop for short birding immediately after turning from Kapchagai to Kurty, where we watched Calandra Larks and Common Starlings. Larks were individual and singing songs. The greatest characteristic of spring is the singing Larks! We later saw a lot of Calandra Larks during the road, both in flocks and alone. Calandra Lark is the most popular bird today, we saw totally about two thousands birds. Only Rook could be another candidate to be most popular bird, because we saw a lot of Rooks in many colonies, already in nests. But number of Rooks was less the number of Calandra Larks. Near Kurty we saw four flying by Great Bustards too, very nice birds, probably the largest bird of Kazakhstan.

Before Kanshengel we visited the well near Aidarly village, where we hoped to find spring Shrikes and Wheatears. We saw not expecting birds but about two tens of Ducks in small lakes (Mallards, Garganeys, Common Teals, Common Pochards, and some Ruddy Shelducks in ground near lake). Of the little Passerines we noticed only Masked Wagtails and Larks. The same little birds we saw in well inside Kanshegel village too. The appearing of Masked Wagtail means the appearing of spring. But the Citrine Wagtail gives the first bright colour for the still grey and pale spring. The first spring Citrine Wagtail contain just this emotion, which will not inside the following Wagtails.

Then we went by the dirty roads to the some of wells in desert. The ground is still wet, some times car veered, especially in saline soils. We watched six Pallas's Sandgrouses and hundreds of Larks, mostly Calandra and White-winged Larks, but Lesser Short-toed and Sky Larks too. We also saw the couple of Long-legged Buzzard staying close to nest. By the way, we didn't see Little Owl, the construction, inside which Owl recent years had nesting, is destroyed. It's a pity.

Our back road was through the lands which Oleg called as “Country of Larks”, that is the territory around Chu-Ili Mountains in direction of Kopa. The road looks like after the war one. There is only one a very nice part of road near Tamgaly, where foreigners watches the cave painting. We saw a lot of Calandra Larks and large flocks of Twites feeding in the road. We saw the Bimaculated Larks too, but still a bit. In this part of road we also noted two Desert Wheatears, both were males. Oleg said that Desert Wheatear appears earlier than other Wheaters, but we usually firstly record Pied Wheatear because latter is numerous and lives near human settlements.

Birds of prey were more diverse than Passerines. Long-legged Buzzard, the raptor number one in Kazakhstan, mostly was observed in couples, some couples were staying near or in nests. Golden Eagles were also observed in couple, may be it means the nesting in these rocks. But Steppe Eagle and Rough-legged Buzzards were observed by alone birds. First one was probably migrant bird, but Buzzards are still in wintering.

During the road from Kopa, and especially from Degeres to foothills there are the road-side trees (Asian Elm). There are colonies of Rooks here, but we were impressed by the number of Common Kestrels, couples of which are staying near old nests. Totally we saw about 20-30 Kestrels during 15-20 kms of the road. We didn't see the expecting isabelline Shrikes but twice recorded Great Grey Shrikes. We saw the Buntings near Shrikes too. All the time when I record Grey Shrike near the flock of Buntings, I think they come to wintering together. Shrike like shepherd follows herd of Buntings and eats mostly the birds from own herd. But it's my guess only.

As usually Oleg was counting number of species, birds and recording the phenological facts. As usually we wanted the nice round number of recorded species. When we had 32, 37 and 42 species, I said we have at least Myna, Tee Sparrow and Collared Dove which we see sure in every next village. But we didn't see these birds, because in Almaty not only winter and summer are rotated almost discretely, but night replaces the day during 15 minutes. So very quickly we became in night, and nothing viewed in villages.

Our loop road was more than 500 kms, we started at 7am and came back close to 10pm. The most important records are singing Larks, Rooks in colonies, Great Bustards, numerous Long-legged Buzzards and Common Kestrels, both in couples near nests, Wagtails, Wheatears. So, the winter is finished.