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Big Caucasus Trip - Ben Macdonald (1 Viewer)

Benedict Macdonald

Well-known member
England
Hi all,

Every year I aim to do one big, comprehensive regional trip in the Western Palearctic. This generally involves going for all possible target species, with really serious GPS-based planning, masses of research and usually seeing all the target species in a region at any time of year. Please take a look at trip reports on my website, www.ben-macdonald.co.uk, or CloudBirders, to see how I plan and carry out birding trips. But if this all sounds very serious, I'm pretty easy going as a person, work in wildlife TV and have a lot of stories to tell and jokes to trade, so only the birding, not the banter, is run with military precision.

This year, from c. 13-28 May, I am doing the Caucasus: Azerbaijan, Nachkivan and Armenia. These three countries provide all of the Caucasian species and much more. I will then do Turkey on a future trip to see WP-endemic Brown Fish Owl, Kurdish Wheatear, Iraq Babbler and Chestnut-shouldered Sparrow. This will be an ambitious and partly pioneering trip with a serious attempt to track down the mythical Hyrcan Tit. This is how the trip will work:

Day 1 - Fly UK to Baku, Azerbaijan and drive south to the Hrycan Woodlands
Day 2 - Entire day searching for Hyrcan (Caspian) Tit based on habitat profiling, historical information and altitude information
Day 3 - Caspian Coast - dawn/morning on breeding shikra; then, white-tailed plover, terek and broad-billed sandpiper and passage including Dalmatian Pelicans; happy to incorporate other steppe/ wetland species for other birders
Day 4 - Arrive in the Caucasus from Baku region. Focus on temperate woodland species - Semicollared & RB Flycatcher; Green Warbler
Day 5 - Caucasus 1 - Laza. Dawn Caucasian Grouse lek and then local species with main emphasis on red-fronted serin and mountain chiffchaff.
Day 6 - Caucasus 2 - Xinaliq. Whole day's trekking from dawn for the three big ones: Caucasian Snowcock, Guldenstadt's Redstart, Great Rosefinch and other montane species such as RF Serin, local races Twite and Horned Lark
Day 7 - return Baku, meet guide and travel to Nachkivan
Day 8-10: Nachkivan. Key semi-arid region in the WP for: See-see Partridge, Mongolian Finch, Persian Wheatear, Upcher's Warbler, Grey-necked Bunting, Eastern Rock Nuthatch. Levant Sparrowhawk and Rosy Starling. Expect to see all of these and possibly time here for Caspian Snowcock and Radde's.
Day 11 - return Baku. Ben flies on to Armenia (birders welcome to join for part 2). Birder(s) can join or fly home if this trip is the right length. Ben flies Tbilsi (Georgia) and car service takes him (or team) S to Yerevan, Armenia.
Day 12 - Yerevan region. Dawn local park for nailed-on Levant Sparrowhawks. Radde's Accentor, WT Robin and CW Finch on Aragats then south to Armash.
Day 13 - famous Armash Fishponds. Slow the pace to enjoy spectacle of finest ponds in the WP, specifically targeting white-tailed lapwing, b-w pratincole, paddyfield warbler, menetries warbler - possibility of caspian plover. Host of rare species inc white-headed duck, 'caspian' reed warbler, pelicans, waders.
Day 14 - Caspian Snowcock day. Entire day traversing montane site for this ultimate wilderness bird - second pass at crimson-winged finch if needed.
Day 15 - return to Yerevan and then home.

Exciting doesn't even cover this trip, it could be epic. The last one I did on this scale was Israel 2016 with Henry Cook, whom I met via this Forum. We got 200 species in a week including finding Desert Owl (no guide), Syrian Serin and Black Bush Robin. In 2015 I did Morocco, found a new site for Hemipode as well as refinding a colony of white-rumped swift documented in the 1960s. So I am genuinely hopeful that we can be some of the first birders to set eyes on Hyrcan Tit within the WP. This is a serious trip.

If interested, please drop me a line. I am flexible and always help track down other people's targets (even if I've seen them). Rest assured you'll clock over 200 species and there are whole lot of other targets that I've seen but will enjoy seeing again (i.e. bimaculated lark; lammergeier; wallcreeper...)

Let's conquer the Caucasus.

Ben
 
Sounds like a great trip - good luck with the Hyrcan (Caspian) Tit. You'll be popular if you manage to find that one in the BWP Western Palearctic. I'm led to believe it is not too difficult in Iran but that of course is outside the BWP boundary.

cheers, alan
 
Thanks both for your comments and sorry you can't join. I do hope to make the breakthrough with Hyrcan Tit, my presumption being that it continues to occupy gnarled, open habitats on the tree-line that require a long walk, but that within these habitats it should persist... but then if it was easy, it would have been found by now. That said, Az is extremely understudied relative to its richness of birds and size.
 
Thanks both for your comments and sorry you can't join. I do hope to make the breakthrough with Hyrcan Tit, my presumption being that it continues to occupy gnarled, open habitats on the tree-line that require a long walk, but that within these habitats it should persist... but then if it was easy, it would have been found by now. That said, Az is extremely understudied relative to its richness of birds and size.

I've been there a couple of times for work and managed a very brief search for the Tit in hills above the road down towards the Iran border (no sign, roadside stops only). I did manage to see and photograph Shikra at a roadside lunch stop is a plantation area somewhere but I've seen loads outside the WP, so wasn't too excited about that!

cheers, alan
 
Armash is amazing. You'll love it.

My target there was the lapwing, too. They were within a few hundred meters of the entrance last April. Also had the pratincole, Menetries' warbler, and white-headed ducks. No Caspian plover or paddyfield.
 
I'm led to believe it is not too difficult in Iran but that of course is outside the BWP boundary.

Depending on which BWP boundary of course :)

Due in July 2017, Shiriahi's Handbook of Western Palearctic Birds includes Iran within their definition of the WP:

"The reasons given for including Iran and
Arabia are both faunistic and practical. Both
were very debatably omitted from BWP, as their
species and subspecies have much in common
with the remainder of the Middle East, and it is
seen as simply logical to include the whole of
the Middle East within the WP."



And for the birder ...

"This newly defined Western Palearctic may be
taken as the new birding standard."



Caspian Tit is on my WP list :)
 
Depending on which BWP boundary of course :)

Due in July 2017, Shiriahi's Handbook of Western Palearctic Birds includes Iran within their definition of the WP:

"The reasons given for including Iran and
Arabia are both faunistic and practical. Both
were very debatably omitted from BWP, as their
species and subspecies have much in common
with the remainder of the Middle East, and it is
seen as simply logical to include the whole of
the Middle East within the WP."



And for the birder ...

"This newly defined Western Palearctic may be
taken as the new birding standard."



Caspian Tit is on my WP list :)

Jos, that is why I said BWP (as in "Birds of the Western Palearctic") boundary to distinguish between other suggested boundaries. I entirely agree that a more precise bio-geographically defined WP would include most of Iran and indeed all of the Arabian Peninsular, other than the Afro-tropical enclaves.

On balance and given the difficulty in establishing a precise bio-geographic boundary, an appropriate compromise is indeed to include all of Iran and the Arabian Peninsular, since that is less worse than excluding them.

It's even more fun trying to sort out a meaningful southern boundary!

cheers, alan
 
Jos, that is why I said BWP (as in "Birds of the Western Palearctic") boundary to distinguish between other suggested boundaries. I entirely agree that a more precise bio-geographically defined WP would include most of Iran and indeed all of the Arabian Peninsular, other than the Afro-tropical enclaves.

On balance and given the difficulty in establishing a precise bio-geographic boundary, an appropriate compromise is indeed to include all of Iran and the Arabian Peninsular, since that is less worse than excluding them.

It's even more fun trying to sort out a meaningful southern boundary!

cheers, alan

Agree to all :t:
 
Hi both, firstly I am in complete agreement that the Shirihai treatment is by far the most sensible, better thought through, and will be adopted when both the Handbooks are eventually released... it is certainly odd adopting a system proposed in the 70's and a series of half-countries, like Mauretania, but then a new bench-mark has never been laid down in a published book, and therefore we all fall into line following the biggest work to date. In order to compete fairly and share lists, we adopt the same region - but yes, Josh, I'd agree with you by and large. That said, there is always a welcome challenge refinding a breeding bird in Europe, and few people get the chance to do this. Likewise, one day most of us should see dark chanting goshawks in Saudi, but who doesn't dream of finding the last one in Morocco, right on the edge of its range within the region we've grown up with...

Thanks also for the info on Armash, very useful - the first time I've heard of someone missing Paddyfield but I suppose the habitat is quite precise and have never seen more than 2-3 mentioned in reports.
 
I do hope to make the breakthrough with Hyrcan Tit, my presumption being that it continues to occupy gnarled, open habitats on the tree-line that require a long walk, but that within these habitats it should persist...

It would not surprise me if still present, but not necessarily at the tree line only - on the Iranian side, I found them even in the valley bottoms where the good habitat existed, this moderately open, but not especially so - from a distance it looked quite open, but once in the habitat, it tended to be low trees/bush, but reasonably think. Little information was available regarding the Iranian birds previously, and it seems that I found the second ever nest for them in Iran, though the reality is they do not appear uncommon.

Pictures of the habitat and account of the birding are HERE if of any use to your search (scroll to 5-6 April, second habitat picture shows the nest site - the small trees on the left of the track)
 
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Hi Ben
this is Colin from the Israel trip in 2015, hope you are keeping well.
This trip looks epic and is one of the areas that I have been interested in, unfortunately I am booked up this year, Finland in May, Bulgaria in September.
I will keep an eye open for your trip report.
For anyone contemplating going with Ben I can add that he is indeed good company and the research that goes into his trips is the most thorough that I know. If anyone can clean up it is Ben

Good luck
 
Hi Colin, very kind of you and good to hear you're keeping well and busy. I am still looking for participants so if anyone is interesting in joining, please PM me or email me. Ben
 
Hi Colin, very kind of you and good to hear you're keeping well and busy. I am still looking for participants so if anyone is interesting in joining, please PM me or email me. Ben

Cheers Ben
Did Georgia last year at Batumi, went to the Caucasus and got the Snowcock, Grouse and Redstart but dipped on the Rosefinch, just a bit too late.
Look forward to seeing your report.
 
Glad to see in the netfugl ranking that your effort paid off!

Are you going to write a trip report about your findings? That would be lovely

Maffong
 
It was certainly the highlight of my WP birding to find Caspian Tits in an ancient forest in a very remote part of the Taylish Mountains. A trip report is on its way but also a short trip later in the year is planned to try and provide definitive sonogram and photographic evidence that this species still persists in Europe, having not been seen since 1976 to the best of my knowledge. Surely a deserving species for a plate in the Collins Guide as well as a bird that takes you to the last forests in Europe where leopards and wolves still exist side by side.
 
Hi both, firstly I am in complete agreement that the Shirihai treatment is by far the most sensible, better thought through, and will be adopted when both the Handbooks are eventually released... it is certainly odd adopting a system proposed in the 70's and a series of half-countries, like Mauretania, but then a new bench-mark has never been laid down in a published book, and therefore we all fall into line following the biggest work to date. In order to compete fairly and share lists, we adopt the same region - but yes, Josh, I'd agree with you by and large. That said, there is always a welcome challenge refinding a breeding bird in Europe, and few people get the chance to do this. Likewise, one day most of us should see dark chanting goshawks in Saudi, but who doesn't dream of finding the last one in Morocco, right on the edge of its range within the region we've grown up with...

Thanks also for the info on Armash, very useful - the first time I've heard of someone missing Paddyfield but I suppose the habitat is quite precise and have never seen more than 2-3 mentioned in reports.


I've always thought that a precise area is impossible to define and that a transitional zone like Wallacea in Asia is more realistic?


A
 
It was certainly the highlight of my WP birding to find Caspian Tits in an ancient forest in a very remote part of the Taylish Mountains. A trip report is on its way but also a short trip later in the year is planned to try and provide definitive sonogram and photographic evidence that this species still persists in Europe, having not been seen since 1976 to the best of my knowledge. Surely a deserving species for a plate in the Collins Guide as well as a bird that takes you to the last forests in Europe where leopards and wolves still exist side by side.

Azerbaijan is part of WP by any definition, but I don't think it has ever been considered part of Europe.
 
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