opisska
rabid twitcher
Yesterday was a first full day that we have fully dedicated to the PASTA project. PASTA stands for Polish Active Search for Tit Azure and also for "I just made uP A nonSense for a funny Title, Alright?". Originally we wanted to give it two days, but alas, for today we had the workers to install hot water for our place coming, which is also a relatively worthwhile thing to invest some time into.
The whole thing is BF's own jurek's idea started in a random thread - https://www.birdforum.net/threads/the-ukrainian-polesie-in-search-of-azure-tit.376072/#post-3845655 - to look for Azure Tit in eastern Poland, around the Bug river that makes the natural border between Poland and Belarus. In the same thread jurek also claims that the area is accessible without problems ... well, we'll shortly see about that.
After a 6:30 am alarm, we arrived to Terespol at 9:30, going straight for a really promising area of reedbeds between the city and the river. Despite Google Maps' promises of a route, the last kilometer had a no traffic sign, so we walked along the railway, hoping that there would eventually be a way through the weird fence around the road to reach the reedbeds proper. Long story short, there isn't, because the fence signifies a "railway border crossing" and this whole area between the city, two railway bridges and the highway is off-limits. The chat with the patrol guy was nice, but we had to wait for a patrol car to run out IDs through a computer and lost almost an hour altogether - at least they drove us back to out car. We also learned that outside of this triangle, the border is accessible, be that we should not enter within 300 meters from the border without requesting permission (by email) from the border patrol first and not within the last 15 meters to the river at all. We have done so in the past without issues, but we didn't really want to risk having the same guards sent after us again, so we chose other areas slightly further inland to continue the search, while thinking to ourselves silently that those people need to realize that the Cold War is over and this whole thing is a disgrace in civilized 21st century Europe.
We have thus moved NW to the Krzna river valley. This small watercourse that I have never heard about creates yet another lovely wild marshy valley - it's really beyond imagination how many of those are there in NE Poland. The lower part is surrounded by active cow pastures to which we had to climb carefully over an energized electric fence; a few kilometers upstream, the valley is deserted and has more reeds and some nice forests around. Even higher up into the very, very gentle (as expected here) hills, one finds extensive fishponds with nonetheless extensive reeds - and finally some more reedy fishponds are found in another parallel "valley" some 7 kms west. This all seemed like as good Azure Tit wintering habitat as any, so we walked through playing various AT sounds - which turned up to be very popular with all sorts of Tits: Great, Blue, Marsh and Long-tailed, but somewhat expectedly, no Azure Tit showed up.
It was a nice sunny day, first one after weeks of mostly cloudy weather, but it is undeniably winter now and the birds are scarce. Checking the current records, the country may seem teeming with wintering northern specialties, but considering the size of Poland, it's quite unlikely to stumble upon any Twites, Snow Buntings, Shore Larks, Great Loons or Slavonian Grebe by accident. Apart from the mixed Tit flocks, we saw some Bullifnches, Nuthatches, Starlings, Yellowhammers, Fieldfares, Mallards, Mute Swans and Mergansers, a considerable entourage of White Egrets and Grey Herons, a big flock of Greenfinches with some Goldfinches, a lone Grey Shrike, a Sparrowhawk, the inevitable Common Buzzards and a wide selection of Corvids; Cranes were heard in the distance, but never seen. Finally, when we stopped half-way to Warsaw near Siedlce to look for some mammals with the thermal camera in the night (after the absurd 3:30 pm winter sunset), we found a group of Grey Partridge hiding in a freshly plowed field.
The area along the border with Belarus and eventually Ukraine to the south is immense, as Bug flows along the border for hundreds of kilometers and is scenic enough that the lack of Azure Tits does not make one feel in any way unsatisfied after a visit. It is still 2 and a half hours from Warsaw, so it's not really a place to drive to every day, but I feel like we might pay it some more visits during the winter, unless something more urgent shows up, or the world gets magically suddenly open and safe for travel.
The whole thing is BF's own jurek's idea started in a random thread - https://www.birdforum.net/threads/the-ukrainian-polesie-in-search-of-azure-tit.376072/#post-3845655 - to look for Azure Tit in eastern Poland, around the Bug river that makes the natural border between Poland and Belarus. In the same thread jurek also claims that the area is accessible without problems ... well, we'll shortly see about that.
After a 6:30 am alarm, we arrived to Terespol at 9:30, going straight for a really promising area of reedbeds between the city and the river. Despite Google Maps' promises of a route, the last kilometer had a no traffic sign, so we walked along the railway, hoping that there would eventually be a way through the weird fence around the road to reach the reedbeds proper. Long story short, there isn't, because the fence signifies a "railway border crossing" and this whole area between the city, two railway bridges and the highway is off-limits. The chat with the patrol guy was nice, but we had to wait for a patrol car to run out IDs through a computer and lost almost an hour altogether - at least they drove us back to out car. We also learned that outside of this triangle, the border is accessible, be that we should not enter within 300 meters from the border without requesting permission (by email) from the border patrol first and not within the last 15 meters to the river at all. We have done so in the past without issues, but we didn't really want to risk having the same guards sent after us again, so we chose other areas slightly further inland to continue the search, while thinking to ourselves silently that those people need to realize that the Cold War is over and this whole thing is a disgrace in civilized 21st century Europe.
We have thus moved NW to the Krzna river valley. This small watercourse that I have never heard about creates yet another lovely wild marshy valley - it's really beyond imagination how many of those are there in NE Poland. The lower part is surrounded by active cow pastures to which we had to climb carefully over an energized electric fence; a few kilometers upstream, the valley is deserted and has more reeds and some nice forests around. Even higher up into the very, very gentle (as expected here) hills, one finds extensive fishponds with nonetheless extensive reeds - and finally some more reedy fishponds are found in another parallel "valley" some 7 kms west. This all seemed like as good Azure Tit wintering habitat as any, so we walked through playing various AT sounds - which turned up to be very popular with all sorts of Tits: Great, Blue, Marsh and Long-tailed, but somewhat expectedly, no Azure Tit showed up.
It was a nice sunny day, first one after weeks of mostly cloudy weather, but it is undeniably winter now and the birds are scarce. Checking the current records, the country may seem teeming with wintering northern specialties, but considering the size of Poland, it's quite unlikely to stumble upon any Twites, Snow Buntings, Shore Larks, Great Loons or Slavonian Grebe by accident. Apart from the mixed Tit flocks, we saw some Bullifnches, Nuthatches, Starlings, Yellowhammers, Fieldfares, Mallards, Mute Swans and Mergansers, a considerable entourage of White Egrets and Grey Herons, a big flock of Greenfinches with some Goldfinches, a lone Grey Shrike, a Sparrowhawk, the inevitable Common Buzzards and a wide selection of Corvids; Cranes were heard in the distance, but never seen. Finally, when we stopped half-way to Warsaw near Siedlce to look for some mammals with the thermal camera in the night (after the absurd 3:30 pm winter sunset), we found a group of Grey Partridge hiding in a freshly plowed field.
The area along the border with Belarus and eventually Ukraine to the south is immense, as Bug flows along the border for hundreds of kilometers and is scenic enough that the lack of Azure Tits does not make one feel in any way unsatisfied after a visit. It is still 2 and a half hours from Warsaw, so it's not really a place to drive to every day, but I feel like we might pay it some more visits during the winter, unless something more urgent shows up, or the world gets magically suddenly open and safe for travel.