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Kazakhstan – May 2009 After our excellent time at the Korgalzhyn State Nature Reserve we bid a fond farewell to its gorgeous grassy terrain and made our way to a location where Sociable Lapwing were known to breed. Well, that is almost too much to ask for! Below is one of the worst pictures ever of Sociable Lapwings.
Kazakhstan, May 2009 During the two days spent out in the steppe in Kazakhstan I couldn’t help but notice the sheer number of flowers that dotted the grassy steppe. Was it part of some gigantic-scale gardening project planned by the Soviets when Kazakhstan was a part of the USSR? No, no, and no!
Amongst all the species that were split off the Herring Gull, the Caspian Gull is my favourite one, and its existence alone is our fair reward for the identification crisis we had to endure during the dark ages of the 1990s. However, barabensis breeds north of cachinnans and is thus closer to the Arctic ocean.
The wonderful family Meropidae contains 27 dazzling species, of which Africa is endowed with no less than 20 species, the balance occurring across Asia and with one as far afield as Australia. We have both resident and migratory species, and this post will briefly discuss each of the 20 species of African bee-eaters.
In its natural old-world range, the House Sparrow offers an interesting identification challenge and has vagrant potential since it is a polytypic species with a highly complex taxonomy. The genus Passer has several well-recognized and recognizable species in Europe, and still holds several enigmas.
The Chiffchaff Phylloscopus collybita is an abundant species with an impressive global range that stretches from the West of Europe across Siberia to Russia’s far East, just falling short of reaching the Bering Straits by a laughable 800 kilometres, a fact one individual apparently found too awkward to bear. canariensis ).
Over the next few days, the Alpine Accentors ( Prunella collaris ) will arrive on their high-Alpine breeding grounds – it is time to start singing, despite that the treeless Alpine landscape is still under metres of snow. all Alpine Accetor photos digiscoped (c) Dale Forbes. all Alpine Accetor photos digiscoped (c) Dale Forbes.
Seeing a species in New York that is much more common in Eurasia and that only has North American breeding grounds in far northeastern Canada was pretty awesome. And here, for the heck of it, is an image of the last Northern Wheatear I saw – a breeding plumaged bird in May of 2009 in Kazakhstan. … a.
Explaining the increase in the number of sightings is difficult, as the Siberian breeding population is declining. Vagrants are typically found in flocks of Brent Geese or Barnacle Geese so the winter distribution map mimics the stopover and wintering areas of those species.”
The site was where northern Kazakhstan is now, the culture was called Botai and the date was around 3500 B.C. Among all the animal species on this planet, humans have domesticated only a handful. Horse-drawn carriages and breeding and racing horses and using them to play polo or to schlep kids around is an insult to horses.
I’d only ever seen Garganey once before, way back in 2009 in Kazakhstan. So we set to scanning, adding species and birders at a roughly two-to-one ratio. What if we missed it? But before we get into the search I’d like to touch briefly on the bird itself. Yeah, the bird was distant. But I included a Wood Duck for scale!
Among these white-headed/dark-winged gulls formerly lumped into the genus Larus , there were 18+ recognized species the last time I checked, sharing similarities that make telling them apart for the amateur birdwatcher very difficult. 1998), then the proper name for this species is L. fuscus – should be separated as species.
In fact, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology , “The Golden Eagle is the most common official national animal in the world – it’s the emblem of Albania, Germany, Austria, Mexico, and Kazakhstan.” The oldest known Golden Eagle was over 30 years old, and as a species they prefer open and semi-open landscapes.
This bird represented only the second documented record of this species in Florida. 2012 has certainly been a bumper year for me with an estimated year list of around 3,000 species after extensive travels to South Africa, Ethiopia, South Korea, Indonesia, the Russian Far East, United Kingdom, Peru, Guatemala and Panama.
The year 2016 was not a particularly birdy year for me, mostly because I didn’t get to go on business trips to Indonesia or Kazakhstan, as was frequently the case during the last few years. I therefore finished the year on a high note, seeing quite a few species I scarcely got to see during the previous years.
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