18 April. Masrae Seh, Dez River.
Tracking down the specialities in Iran is far from straightforward – very little information exists and the status of many species is poorly understood. On my first trip to Iran in 2011, even sites for the country’s endemic Pleske’s Ground Jay were basically a mystery and many an hour I scrutinised satellite maps to try and locate good birding areas, both for the jay and for other species throughout the country.
Prior to this latest trip, still virtually no information existed for Basra Reed Warbler, one of my main targets. Primarily a breeder in the Mesopotamian marshes of Iraq, a handful of records did exist for Iran, but unfortunately concrete details were painfully scant. In 2012, Swedish birders found a singing bird ‘near the village of Masrae Seh’, but were regrettably unsure of the exact locality and could only describe it as 'about an hour north of Ahvaz'. In my pre-trip planning, I struggled to even locate Masrae Seh (!), so what hope I thought for a patch of marshland somewhere near it! Falling back to my strategy with satellite images, I spent a few hours scanning vast areas of the lower Dez Valley and lands adjacent to the Iraq border in the hope of locating areas of suitable habitat. Discounting a swathe of marshland right on the sensitive Iraqi border, I finally pinpointed a possible site some 40 km north of Ahvaz and drew paper maps with possible access routes and tracks, adding GPS coordinates for use in the field. Googling possible spelling variant of Mazrae Seh, I also finally located this village and was pleased to find it lying pretty close to the marshland I had identified. I still however didn't rate my chances too highly ...I was far from sure that my identified location was actually reedbeds and even if it, it was certainly going to be challenge to find a Basra Reed Warbler - a fairly rare small bird with only a dozen or so records ever in Iran, secretive in nature and inhabiting a habitat largely inaccessible, plus it would be stinking hot within an hour or two of dawn! Gee, I thought, why was I even bothering?
So it was, an hour before sunrise, I was hitchhiking down the main Shush to Ahvaz road watching the GPS on my mobile phone to see where to jump out. At the appointed spot, I hopped out and began my walk, the marsh was approximately 10 km or so from the road. I actually managed to hitch another lift about half way, then with the help of my crudely drawn map and GPS coordinates, I took a small side track that paralleled a canal. An amazing locality, Night Herons abundant, Cattle and Little Egrets too, plus a couple of Pygmy Cormorants flying over. Along the canal, two-a-penny Pied Kingfishers and Red-wattled Plovers, then the first dainty White-tailed Plover. Turtle Doves in scrub, Rufous Bush Robins common and Graceful Prinias scratching out their songs. On I walked, a Grey Hypocolius flew over, singles of both Turkmenistan and Woodchat Shrikes appeared atop bushes, flocks of Black-headed Buntings fed in arid fields alongside, so too Ortolan Buntings and Afghan Babblers.
And then, a feast for the eyes, a vast marsh opened out to the left, far better than I had been expecting and absolutely peppered with birds. Wafts of Collared Pratincoles filled the sky, perhaps 250 in all, a breeding colony located a little further along, while on the marsh itself, ranks of Black-winged Stilts paddled shallow pools, along with Grey Herons, a few Purple Herons and an impressive 40 or so Squacco Herons. Whiskered Terns milled in flocks, a Marsh Harrier quartered the reeds and another dozen or so White-tailed Plovers adorned grass flats adjacent. Also, a couple more Pygmy Cormorants. I however had a small problem - though I could watch over the marsh with ease, I was actually on the wrong side of a canal to actually access it! Separated by the canal and then a couple of hundred metres of grass and shallow vegetated waters, the edge of the dense reeds (i.e. potential home to Basra Reed Warbler) was certainly too far away for any hope of detecting a small warbler hiding away in its interior. Voice of Clamorous Reed Warblers drifted out, a couple of European Reed Warblers too, but without getting closer, I could see my chances for Basra Reed Warbler were slim. With no bridges whatsoever, I basically had the choice of retracking about 4 km, taking a swim or hoping for a bridge further along. With the heat already beginning to build, thoughts of retracking didn't appeal, nor did the swim, so on I went. Red-throated Pipits rose from the track, a Dead Sea Sparrow perched in a shrub, Iraq Babblers moved through damper vegetation.
Not far along, to my immediate right, a small patch of reeds clogged a drainage channel, fish pools beyond. I would have barely given the reeds a second glance were it not for a rather splendid male Little Bittern clinging to reed stalks midway up, but as I passed a little melody of grating churrs and sparrow-like chirps seemed to be floating up from the hidden depths. As it registered, alarm bells began to ring! 'Surely not?', I found myself asking. Realising song was always going to be the best way to find a Basra Reed Warbler, I had taken the effort to not only familiarise myself with the song of this species, but also make a copy on my mobile phone for double checking in the field if need be. As it churred and grated away, I sat on a mud embankment and listened, the bird a mere two or three metres distant, but completely invisible. After direct comparison with the recording, there was doubt, I was indeed sitting next to a Basra Reed Warbler! I really couldn't believe it - against all the odds, I had located one!
To say I was ecstatic is an understatement, all I had to do now was actually see it, easier said than done. Lying my mobile phone on the ground, I managed to get some nice voice recordings, but it took a good fifteen minutes before I got my first glimpse of the bird, considerably longer to get good views. For the entirety of the time I spent there, never did the bird emerge from the reeds and never did it do anything but clamber about in the reeds a few centimetres above the ground. Had the bird not been singing, there is no way I would have located it!
Basra Reed Warbler was the absolute highlight of my trip to the Dez River, but an entirely more remarkable event occurred while I was squinting into those reeds trying to see the bird. Turning to scan the main marsh on one occasion, Collared Pratincoles ever-present and a rich assortment of waterbirds dotted across, my binoculars logged an assortment of herons ....Squacco, Squacco, Grey Heron, Little Egret, Grey Heron ...Purple Heron, er no. 'Bloody hell, that's wrong, that's not a Purple Heron'. The bird in question was nothing less than a Goliath Heron! Extremely rare in Iran, birds are supposed to occur in small numbers in the mangroves in south-east Iran and are certainly rumoured to be present in the Iraqi marshes to the west, but I certainly had not expected to see one!
Well, what a morning, simultaneous Goliath Heron and Basra Reed Warbler! By the time I had eventually seen the warbler however, I was a little disappointed to find the Goliath Heron gone, probably having simply walked into patches of high reeds just beyond. Oh but I was feeling quite happy. It was however also getting rather hot!
Walking further, it transpired there were no bridges over the channel, so I never accessed the main marsh at close quarters, I can only assume Basra Reed Warblers breed in some numbers there …or otherwise I was just exceptionally lucky, the bird I found was in the one and only patch of reeds on my side on the canal! After a while, I took a side track leading through agricultural fields away from the marsh. Though bird numbers were lower, a few pairs of Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters were breeding in mud banks, Menetries Warblers sang from bushy areas and a Pallid Harrier winged its way through. A road that I had identified from satellite images turned out to be a railway, but beyond that I found another smaller road. From there, the sun now burning down, I hitched a lift on the back of a motorbike to a village some kilometres distant and from there back to the main road. I then got a lift back to Shush, arriving early afternoon in time for a short siesta, 60 species under my belt for this morning.
Afternoon entertainment was far more tranquil, simply taking a late afternoon stroll on open land behind Shush castle. I had seen Sandford's Fox here on a previous trip, but the honours this time went to a couple of Black Francolins, three European Rollers, three Turkmenistan Shrikes, three Woodchat Shrikes and one Red-backed Shrike.
Day over, what a stunner it had been!
Tracking down the specialities in Iran is far from straightforward – very little information exists and the status of many species is poorly understood. On my first trip to Iran in 2011, even sites for the country’s endemic Pleske’s Ground Jay were basically a mystery and many an hour I scrutinised satellite maps to try and locate good birding areas, both for the jay and for other species throughout the country.
Prior to this latest trip, still virtually no information existed for Basra Reed Warbler, one of my main targets. Primarily a breeder in the Mesopotamian marshes of Iraq, a handful of records did exist for Iran, but unfortunately concrete details were painfully scant. In 2012, Swedish birders found a singing bird ‘near the village of Masrae Seh’, but were regrettably unsure of the exact locality and could only describe it as 'about an hour north of Ahvaz'. In my pre-trip planning, I struggled to even locate Masrae Seh (!), so what hope I thought for a patch of marshland somewhere near it! Falling back to my strategy with satellite images, I spent a few hours scanning vast areas of the lower Dez Valley and lands adjacent to the Iraq border in the hope of locating areas of suitable habitat. Discounting a swathe of marshland right on the sensitive Iraqi border, I finally pinpointed a possible site some 40 km north of Ahvaz and drew paper maps with possible access routes and tracks, adding GPS coordinates for use in the field. Googling possible spelling variant of Mazrae Seh, I also finally located this village and was pleased to find it lying pretty close to the marshland I had identified. I still however didn't rate my chances too highly ...I was far from sure that my identified location was actually reedbeds and even if it, it was certainly going to be challenge to find a Basra Reed Warbler - a fairly rare small bird with only a dozen or so records ever in Iran, secretive in nature and inhabiting a habitat largely inaccessible, plus it would be stinking hot within an hour or two of dawn! Gee, I thought, why was I even bothering?
So it was, an hour before sunrise, I was hitchhiking down the main Shush to Ahvaz road watching the GPS on my mobile phone to see where to jump out. At the appointed spot, I hopped out and began my walk, the marsh was approximately 10 km or so from the road. I actually managed to hitch another lift about half way, then with the help of my crudely drawn map and GPS coordinates, I took a small side track that paralleled a canal. An amazing locality, Night Herons abundant, Cattle and Little Egrets too, plus a couple of Pygmy Cormorants flying over. Along the canal, two-a-penny Pied Kingfishers and Red-wattled Plovers, then the first dainty White-tailed Plover. Turtle Doves in scrub, Rufous Bush Robins common and Graceful Prinias scratching out their songs. On I walked, a Grey Hypocolius flew over, singles of both Turkmenistan and Woodchat Shrikes appeared atop bushes, flocks of Black-headed Buntings fed in arid fields alongside, so too Ortolan Buntings and Afghan Babblers.
And then, a feast for the eyes, a vast marsh opened out to the left, far better than I had been expecting and absolutely peppered with birds. Wafts of Collared Pratincoles filled the sky, perhaps 250 in all, a breeding colony located a little further along, while on the marsh itself, ranks of Black-winged Stilts paddled shallow pools, along with Grey Herons, a few Purple Herons and an impressive 40 or so Squacco Herons. Whiskered Terns milled in flocks, a Marsh Harrier quartered the reeds and another dozen or so White-tailed Plovers adorned grass flats adjacent. Also, a couple more Pygmy Cormorants. I however had a small problem - though I could watch over the marsh with ease, I was actually on the wrong side of a canal to actually access it! Separated by the canal and then a couple of hundred metres of grass and shallow vegetated waters, the edge of the dense reeds (i.e. potential home to Basra Reed Warbler) was certainly too far away for any hope of detecting a small warbler hiding away in its interior. Voice of Clamorous Reed Warblers drifted out, a couple of European Reed Warblers too, but without getting closer, I could see my chances for Basra Reed Warbler were slim. With no bridges whatsoever, I basically had the choice of retracking about 4 km, taking a swim or hoping for a bridge further along. With the heat already beginning to build, thoughts of retracking didn't appeal, nor did the swim, so on I went. Red-throated Pipits rose from the track, a Dead Sea Sparrow perched in a shrub, Iraq Babblers moved through damper vegetation.
Not far along, to my immediate right, a small patch of reeds clogged a drainage channel, fish pools beyond. I would have barely given the reeds a second glance were it not for a rather splendid male Little Bittern clinging to reed stalks midway up, but as I passed a little melody of grating churrs and sparrow-like chirps seemed to be floating up from the hidden depths. As it registered, alarm bells began to ring! 'Surely not?', I found myself asking. Realising song was always going to be the best way to find a Basra Reed Warbler, I had taken the effort to not only familiarise myself with the song of this species, but also make a copy on my mobile phone for double checking in the field if need be. As it churred and grated away, I sat on a mud embankment and listened, the bird a mere two or three metres distant, but completely invisible. After direct comparison with the recording, there was doubt, I was indeed sitting next to a Basra Reed Warbler! I really couldn't believe it - against all the odds, I had located one!
To say I was ecstatic is an understatement, all I had to do now was actually see it, easier said than done. Lying my mobile phone on the ground, I managed to get some nice voice recordings, but it took a good fifteen minutes before I got my first glimpse of the bird, considerably longer to get good views. For the entirety of the time I spent there, never did the bird emerge from the reeds and never did it do anything but clamber about in the reeds a few centimetres above the ground. Had the bird not been singing, there is no way I would have located it!
Basra Reed Warbler was the absolute highlight of my trip to the Dez River, but an entirely more remarkable event occurred while I was squinting into those reeds trying to see the bird. Turning to scan the main marsh on one occasion, Collared Pratincoles ever-present and a rich assortment of waterbirds dotted across, my binoculars logged an assortment of herons ....Squacco, Squacco, Grey Heron, Little Egret, Grey Heron ...Purple Heron, er no. 'Bloody hell, that's wrong, that's not a Purple Heron'. The bird in question was nothing less than a Goliath Heron! Extremely rare in Iran, birds are supposed to occur in small numbers in the mangroves in south-east Iran and are certainly rumoured to be present in the Iraqi marshes to the west, but I certainly had not expected to see one!
Well, what a morning, simultaneous Goliath Heron and Basra Reed Warbler! By the time I had eventually seen the warbler however, I was a little disappointed to find the Goliath Heron gone, probably having simply walked into patches of high reeds just beyond. Oh but I was feeling quite happy. It was however also getting rather hot!
Walking further, it transpired there were no bridges over the channel, so I never accessed the main marsh at close quarters, I can only assume Basra Reed Warblers breed in some numbers there …or otherwise I was just exceptionally lucky, the bird I found was in the one and only patch of reeds on my side on the canal! After a while, I took a side track leading through agricultural fields away from the marsh. Though bird numbers were lower, a few pairs of Blue-cheeked Bee-eaters were breeding in mud banks, Menetries Warblers sang from bushy areas and a Pallid Harrier winged its way through. A road that I had identified from satellite images turned out to be a railway, but beyond that I found another smaller road. From there, the sun now burning down, I hitched a lift on the back of a motorbike to a village some kilometres distant and from there back to the main road. I then got a lift back to Shush, arriving early afternoon in time for a short siesta, 60 species under my belt for this morning.
Afternoon entertainment was far more tranquil, simply taking a late afternoon stroll on open land behind Shush castle. I had seen Sandford's Fox here on a previous trip, but the honours this time went to a couple of Black Francolins, three European Rollers, three Turkmenistan Shrikes, three Woodchat Shrikes and one Red-backed Shrike.
Day over, what a stunner it had been!
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