Great Birding This Week – Again

Another winter day out north of Almaty Kazakhstan. Beautiful sunny weather rising to +4C (It’s unseasonably +16C today in Almaty).

Spring is arriving early this year here in Central Asia as elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere.

41 Sightings with an early Hoopoe, an unexpected Long-eared Owl, a lonely Pallas’s Gull sitting on lake ice near to a flock Caspian Gulls (proving it always pays to scan flocks of gulls), and 5 Dalmatian Pelicans – the earliest sighting ever of these early migrators for me. And of course, the fabulous raptors!

3 Mute Swans

Over 150 Whooper Swans

11 Ruddy Shelducks

100s of Mallard (or is it Mallards?)

10 Gadwall

3 Teal (with Gadwall, also early arrivals)

Flock of Tufted Ducks

2+ Goldeneye

1 male and a few female Smew (and should this be Smews?)

50+ Goosander

16 Little Grebe

2 Great Egrets

5 Dalmatian Pelicans

1 Common Kestrel

30+ White-tailed Eagles

1 Long-legged Buzzard

3+ Steppe Eagles

1 Moorhen

3 Green Sandpipers

Several Common Gulls

100+ Caspian Gulls

1 Pallas’s (Great Black-headed) Gull already in breeding plumage

Lots of Feral Pigeons in towns and villages

1 Long-eared Owl

1 Hoopoe

Lots of Magpies, Rooks and Jackdaws

Several Carrion and Hooded Crows

6 Great Tits

2 Large flocks of id’d Calandra Larks but couldn’t id Bimacs or other larger larks in the flocks, although 4 smaller larks which may have been Short-toed of one species or another.

10 Common Mynas

6 Blackbirds

6 Black-throated Thrushes

1 Mistle Thrush

Several House Sparrows in towns and villages

Lots of Tree Sparrows in the countryside

2 Bramblings

1 Goldfinch

About 50 Greenfinches

My trips will become more frequent now as we move towards spring and migration season. Delicious!