Quest for Azure Tit, Part Two
Two months on, Belarus again beckoned, time for another try at the elusive mystic that is Azure Tit.
Step one, visa - successfully obtained.
Step two, navigate the border - hmm, can be problematic. Decided on a strategy to cross at night, so avoiding the horrendous queues that typify the place. So, at midnight, out I headed into the darkness. Strategy one, mistake number one - got to the border at 12.20 a.m., nice and early ...then found an enormous queue of cars tailing back a kilometre and more! It was going to be a long night! And so it was, over FIVE hours of queues before I finally cleared the last of endless hurdles of stamps and checks!!! Had hoped to be in the Pripiyet Valley by dawn, some 400 kilometres further south, but instead spent it in company of border guards …by the time I was through, I was so shattered that I needed to waste another a couple of hours with a quick snooze in the car alongside the road. So, eventually at 7.30 a.m., having travelled all of 40 km east of my home, I was finally inside the country and ready to begin my journey south. Then it began to rain! Jeepers, was beginning to think someone had it in for me - it hadn’t rained for weeks and now it was chucking it down! Rained on and off all the way down and then the heavens absolutely opened just as arrived at Turov, the heart of the Pripiyet Valley!
Hmm, this weekend just wasn’t following the expected plan! Well, nothing I could do about the rain, so drove the car out into one meadow and did a bit of watching from the car - a few soggy Lapwings wandered past the car, but beyond them there was a real spectacle to be enjoyed …the meadows I had chosen to park alongside were a mass of White-winged Black Terns! Across the meadows as far as the eye could see, these super birds literally were everywhere - I had stumbled across a massive breeding colony and, paying no regard to the rain, many hawked right up close to the car, with dozens of others on the river to the right and countless more flying in and out with fish for waiting youngsters. Wound down the window and started to shoot off a few pictures, of the soggy Lapwings too, what a good way to spend a rainy morning!
About midday, the skies suddenly cleared, the sun came out and almost immediately it became rather hot! Now, into the field, let’s wrap up the Azure Tit, I thought. Took a long walk along a most pleasant stretch of riverside woodland to a spot where the good folks at the Turov ringing station had seen Azure Tit a month before. All too soon, the specialities of Eastern Europe were appearing as they should - Thrush Nightingales belting their songs out, two Hoopoes flitting up, a Wryneck on a an old stump, Common Rosefinches here and there, and plenty more. Some hour into my walk I encountered a large mixed tit flock, oodles of youngsters and a prime spot to locate my target. Scanned every blighter in the flock at least three times I reckon - plenty of Great Tits, plenty of Blue Tits, a couple of Willow Tits too, but one certain bird was obvious by its absence! Walked on for another hour, slowly becoming rather sleepy, a Black Stork circled overhead, a continual stream of Grey Herons headed into a colony nearby, but as the sun beat down and fatigue set in (not forgetting the night on the border), I began to realise my quest would not be finishing on this day! Decided to make camp about 50 km further up the valley at a nice spot I found on the trip two months previous - got there about 7 p.m. and immediately saw another Wryneck, a Hoopoe, a stack of Cuckoos and not much more …largely due to an urgent need to crash out, dozed off to a backdrop of singing River Warblers and was fast asleep by 8p.m.!!!
Pictures from the car window during the rain, a couple of the White-winged Black Terns and one of a soggy Lapwing.
