Author: Peter T

July 16 and 18 2018. Tien Shan Mountains, Kyrgyzstan. This month in Kyrgyzstan was not just about birds, I have many other interests. Participation on the Snow Leopard expedition was simply an exciting opportunity that caught my imagination. I was just one of a team of volunteers coordinated by Biosphere Expeditions to help Ukrainian scientist, Dr. Volodya Tytar with field work. Our task was to hike up selected remote valleys and look for evidence of the presence of Snow Leopards: prey species, footprints, and scat primarily.

 

It was an exhilarating and awe-inspiring opportunity to go somewhere I’d never imagined I would. The team was a happy and cooperative group from Germany, Holland, Britain, Australia, USA and Canada. Our guides and cook were local Kyrgys, lovely people. Living conditions were comfortable; we were well-fed and provided necessary transportation and field equipment like compasses, radios and GPS (or sat-nav). It was up to us to participate in it as an expedition not as a holiday; that wasn’t difficult.

Each day involved hiking another tributary valley to its glacial head. It was always rough going and tiring although clearly easier for our two twenty-something year-olds. But hard or not it was endlessly and compellingly interesting: the snow-topped mountains, the loneliness, the sky, majestic views and flowers everywhere. Scattered families of nomadic herders turned their sheep, goats, cattle and horses out to graze the deep grasses around us. The yurt homesteads were managed by women, and the men, on horseback, with their lanky Borzoi dogs looked after the livestock.

Expanses of Globeflowers (Trollius altaicus) turned hillside meadows orange in sweeps, soggy low spots were sometimes shin deep in spectacular purple primroses (Primula nivalis) and several species of wild onion (Allium). There were rushing streams to cross, boulder fields to navigate, wide meadows and always the literally breathtaking hike upwards.

We’d pause to scan the high slopes and rocky ridges looking for Ibex or Argali, both prey for Snow Leopards. We knew there was not a prayer we’d spot a Snow Leopard in the endless walls, fractured crags and mountain debris. But for Ibex or Argali, there was every reason to scan and scrutinise closely.

At a breath-catching pause in today’s ascent we saw a small bird flitting from one lookout rock to another. It was small, bob-tailed, unlike any of the more common wheatears, larks or wagtails and quite hard to follow. It was almost too far away from us, so a challenge even with good binoculars. Only two of us in today’s group had any particular interest in birds and I was about to shrug it off when a glimpse, a sudden flash, of iridescent ruby triggered the identification, a Himalayan (or White-tailed) Rubythroat. Its flashy red chin is so distinctive making it unlike anything else in the field guide, it was an easy call.

I encountered another rubythroat two days later in another valley. I was crouched on a low rock absorbed in watching a busy group of young Mountain Weasels explore their home range. I must have been uncomfortably close to the rubythroat’s nest or fledglings because, while it flew from vantage point to vantage point, it was never far away and watched me closely.

Quiet inaction is very often highly productive for seeing birds well and on this same little bit of valley I enjoyed long, privileged views of Güldenstädt’s Redstart, Altai Accentor and Isabelline Wheatears, all great birds although none could quite match the Himalayan Rubythroat.

Dr. Tytar, was excited and intrigued by the rubythroats, he felt these sightings indicated an altitudinal range extension for the species (at about 3200M), perhaps a result of climate change. He was happy and so was I, blissfully.

July 17 2018. Tien Shan Mountains, Kyrgyzstan. The focus of our Snow Leopard quest was to find irrefutable evidence of the cats’ presence. But one or twice when I commented on finding something I thought interesting but doubted anyone else would, irrelevant maybe, I was surprised.  These tidbits provoked a sometimes-excited response from Dr. Volodya Tytar, our expedition scientist, who viewed them as possible indicators of changes in land use or climate, and therefore germane to the question of whether Snow Leopards are resident. Science, he pointed out, involves the painstaking, sometimes very boring, assembly of countless bits of information. My odd little observations were every bit as important.

So, in the interest of the bigger picture, it was quite appropriate that one day a small group with known interests in birds was directed to follow a herder’s track up a narrow valley and see what birds we could find. It is possible they were humouring us, but so what.

A group of birders doesn’t move very fast in the field, faster than botanists certainly, but we took all morning to cover less than a kilometre of rough ground and cattle pasture; we were having too much fun. In that morning we were slowed to a crawl by many intriguing birds, specifically including: Cinereous Vulture, Common Rosefinches, Common Cuckoo, Rock Thrush, and Hobby. I might also add Isabelline and Northern Wheatears as well as Citrine and White Wagtails, but they were to be expected anyway.

The vulture was almost our first bird and it was one of those experiences where I had to pinch myself . (I did that a lot). The setting was a towering green mountainside, a clear blue sky and this huge, solitary bird like a floating plank cruising the skyline. Much debate and field guide consultation (Birds of Central Asia) followed and we all became convinced that it was a Cinereous Vulture. Wow enough to be Bird of the Day; although perhaps too early in the day.

Stepping carefully around cow pats we puzzled a bit at juvenile Citrine Wagtails, (problem solved when the parents showed up to feed them) We inspected Common Rosefinches at length questioning whether they were really Commons or could they possibly be Red-mantled, or Spotted Great, or Red-fronted Rosefinches.  (But no, just Commons.)

Bird of the Day was a Rock Thrush, a fairly common bird as it turns out. I had been distracted by a Common Cuckoo which had persuaded us for a while that it was an accipiter; but then which one? Then my companions drew my attention to the Rock Thrush that had just popped into view on a small exposed rock cascade. It caused us a lot of head scratching; we were all beginners in this game. The bird was quite passive and only ever moved in order to allow us a better view. We made several uninspired guesses until the field guide made it abundantly clear. What a stunningly beautiful bird! And by a narrow margin my Bird of the Day.

 July 9 2018. Tien Shan Mountains, Kyrgyzstan. To set the scene, this was the first day of our expedition into a remote corner of the Tien Shan Mountains to look for evidence of Snow Leopards. We were twelve plus our scientist, local guides, and staff, seventeen in all.  Our base camp of three yurts and a village of two-man tents (one each) was at the end of a nine hour drive across and through a snow-capped mountain range into West Karakuul Valley a wide expanse that lies metres deep in snow for half the year.  The backdrop to our days, this miles-wide glaciated hollow, now knee-deep green with lush pasture, thick with brilliant flowers (including many species of wild onions) and peopled by nomad herdsmen and their families. From every tributary valley ice-cold meltwater poured out of springs or tumbled from the toes of glaciers becoming rivulets, streams and cascades interlaced and gathering into the fast tumbling river in the main valley floor.

Citrine Wagtail were always exotics to me, as birds of China and Central Asia they were always impossibly out of my reach and only ever seen in photos and field guides. But here I was, suddenly now in Central Asia of all places, and on our first day, our day of the long drive in, I saw my Citrine Wagtail, a long-nurtured ambition come to life.

This, my first, Citrine Wagtail came as we made our slow, grinding way to our base camp.  It had been an eight-hour journey that had started in congested Bishkek, had climbed a zigzagging truck route to a high mountain pass and eventually made its way down to the West Karakuul Valley. Now the road, such as it was, was bone-rattling, little more than a herders track at times and there was another hour to go.

Perhaps not surprisingly one of our work-horse Toyota Land Cruisers blew out a tire.  While an energetic crew worked at changing wheels a glimpse of bright yellow drew me to the icy river nearby: it was an adult male Citrine Wagtail.  It soon became obvious that they were the commonest bird in the lower levels of the valleys around us, anywhere you might describe as a wet meadow.  It was Bird of the Day without question and despite seeing dozens over the next two weeks, adults and fledglings, they are wagtails and their tails do just that, wag up and down. It was hard not to be charmed by them every time.

July 7 2018, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan.   Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan, is a young city and hot and dusty in July. It owes its founding to early twentieth century Russian expansionism and efforts to populate this land with permanent settlements rather than nomadic herders. It’s a busy city, with civic pride evident in its vast public plazas, heroic statues and imposing government buildings. Although well treed and having the magnificent setting of a snow-capped mountain range not far to the south it should be an elegant place, but it’s a bit soviet-utilitarian in style. But safe, I found that I could walk anywhere at any time without risk or arousing the unwelcome curiosity that an evident tourist often does. (Even when crossing the wide streets, drivers give lots of careful respect to pedestrians).

I was there on this date waiting to join a twelve-person strong volunteer expedition organized by Biosphere Expeditions and heading  into the Tien Shan mountains to look for evidence of Snow Leopards.  I had a couple of days to myself and naturally wondered what birds I might find; the reality was, not many.

Within walking distance of my inexpensive, but to me luxurious, hotel there were Common Mynas at every turn; they are a sociable bird and tend to be a bit garrulous and before very long they hardly merited a second look.

The hotel was on an unimportant side street, roughly paved and bordered by defensive sheet steel fences and neglected apple and walnut trees. As I walked the road one early morning a bird flew up from the road to a weedy tangle and stayed long enough for me to get a decent un-binoculared look at it. It was clearly a shrike of some kind but hard to tell much more than that. It flew again as I approached and showed an expanse of muted orange across its upper wings and back, that was enough information for me to later identify it as a Long-tailed Shrike, a fairly common bird of urban settings. I came to realize that it is valued for its prolonged soft, melodious and inventive song, music that often pervaded the neighbourhood and in its rambling reminded me of our familiar Northern Mockingbird.

I was quite excited by it for several reasons: I had identified it (always a good start); It was a new bird in a new country; It was shrike, (nifty birds that are few and far between in my world).  It was like finding a corner bit of a jigsaw puzzle, that piece that anchors a sense of place, something to build on.

In the next few weeks I saw several shrikes, not all as easily identified; in fact none of them, although I suspect they included Asian Grey Shrike and/or Great Grey Shrike. One of the month’s recurring difficulties was that many birds of all species were just-out-of-the-nest juveniles and hard to identify. But on one of the last of my days in Kyrgyzstan my companion and I disturbed the above roadside Long-tailed Shrike. It was singing softly until we when pulled up beside it and opened our car doors, with that flew across the road to watch us from a safe distance and perched obligingly for photographs.