An early doors departure from the pension saw us on the road and heading up into the mountains by 5am. Sitting on a converted trailer attached to a tractor with a biting wind certainly woke everyone up I can tell you! After a bone-jarring hour’s ride up to Aldaglar Mountain we reached the spot from which we were to scan for Caspian Snowcock. The weather looked promising after yesterday’s rain and just a few tendrils of mist covered the middle of the mountain, whilst the high tops were still covered by low cloud. Promising, or so we thought…. Anyway, a snowcock began calling and we scanned with our scopes for a while and all of a sudden, a couple of White-winged Snowfinches flew in and landed on the grassy slope beside us. Great!
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| White-winged Snowfinch |
Then, a pair of Chukar were scoped as we continued scanning for snowcocks, Alpine Choughs wheeled across the landscape, and were followed by Asian Crimson-winged Finch perched against the skyline and definitely tickable in the Swarovski scope (expertly located by Hassan).
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| Alpine Chough |
After an hour or so we had a Caspian Snowcock in the scope, distantly but again tickable views, followed by nice views of a pair of Ring Ousels and a Common Rock Thrush. This was followed by a second snowcock sighting and our first Radde’s Accentor.
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| There it is.... Radde's Accentor ON THE ROCK!!! |
And then the weather deteriorated rapidly and rather disastrously as we had thick mist and visibility down to 10 metres. Damn! And it was only 7.30am. But we persevered and gained more snowfinch and accentor views, the latter being seen down to 5 metres.
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| Getting misty eyed.... |
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| Just chillin..... |
And we waited for the weather to lift. And we waited. And we waited some more. We even tried to track down a repeatedly calling snowcock that had ventured very low down the mountain to no avail. And by 10:45am we decided to give up and return to the lodge for a very late 2nd breakfast, or it might have been brunch….
We were out again at midday, with much clearer weather here in the ‘lowlands’ but the tops were still mist enshrouded. Our destination was the Emli Valley, a picturesque area situated between tall mountains. A few Western Rock Nuthatches were the highlight here, and we managed great views in the scope with one bird eventually coming quite close towards the end of our visit.
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| Emli Valley |
We also enjoyed fine scope views of Common Chough, Common Cuckoo, Chukar, a perched Eurasian Crag Martin, a pair of Rock Sparrows that were using an old rock nuthatch nest, several Red-backed Shrikes & Ortolan Bunting. I particularly enjoyed a very co-operative Eastern Orphean Warbler that sang repeatedly and moved between bushes around us.
Leaving here we called back into the lodge briefly before heading back up the Demirkazik road as we needed better views of Asian Crimson-winged Finch, and boy did we get them. I didn't manage a photo but everyone else did!! There was also Long-legged Buzzard, 3 Finsch’s Wheatears, Tawny & Water Pipits, Black-headed Bunting (see video), Rock Bunting and also an out-of-range Spectacled Warbler impressively found by Vince (and we've got the video evidence below too).
What a day!
I'm trying to include a few videos I took each day via my iPhone and Swarovski scope - so I hope it works!!
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