Birding close to home

Azure Tit

It’s quite nice to live in the southern part of Ulaanbaatar. The river Tuul is just 4 minutes away by car (20 minutes by foot). This means that even if I only have an hour or so bins and camera can be taken for a meaningful walk.

Autumn at Tuul Gol

The river banks are covered with riparian forest. After visiting the area a few times I’m slowly getting to know the area. If you prefer to do bird watching rather than mostly bird listening (well both are nice, but the eyes do demand their share), it’s about to find those parts of forest that are dense enough to attract migrants, but not so dense that they just disappear within seconds into the vegetation.

Taiga Flycatcher

I have located some of those areas in the vicinity of the Marshall Bridge south of the city. Birding there is really special just now. We’ve had plenty of rain during the last few days and the area has been loaded with migrants.

Long-tailed Rosefinch

Long-tailed Rosefinch

But maybe most fascinating is that way the birds behave. Warblers, tits, rosefinches, flycatchers, nuthatches all form a cluster or a train of birds. You can walk for up to an hour without seeing much more than the usual suspects – and then all of a sudden the trees are ablaze with birds. In those situations you simply don’t know where to look.

Goshawk

On of my ”most wanted” species was of course Azure Tit. Yesterday I managed to find 4 bird and today I totaled more than 20 (7 birds in on three). It was simply magnificent. It is one of those birds that you can watch for hours – especially in you find one of those really bright and saturated birds.

Azure Tit

Azure Tit

The train-thing is something that the Azure-winged Magpies also do. Today I saw about 30 birds, but just for less than two minutes as they headed upstream. They stroke me as paler than the birds I’ve seen in Spain – and they are considered different species now.

Azure-winged Magpie

Azure-winged Magpie

I think I’ll just mention some of the species I’ve seen during the last few days at Tuul Gol (probably fair to call it my local patch as it is only 20 minutes on foot from my doorstep) just to give you an impression of the quality.

Birdlist:

Arctic Warbler, Yellow-browed Warbler 3, Dusky Warbler 20, Siberian Chiffchaff, Siberian Lesser Whitethroat 12, OBP 3, Citrine Wagtail 1, Booted Eagle, Goshawk, Azure Tit 20, Black-faced Bunting 1, Long-tailed Rosefinch 20+ including several males, Common Rosefinch 2, White-crowned Penduline-tit 10, Saker 1, Mandarine Duck 11, Richard’s Pipit, Taiga Flycatcher 30, Daurian Redstart 4, Azure-winged Magpie 30, White-backed Woodpecker 1, Eastern or Pied Harrier (very dark brown bird), Eastern Rook and Oriental Crow and much more.