News archive
November 2010
Friday, 12 November 2010
Birding 1300 Miles East of Suffolk, Summer 2010, by Paul Bradbeer
Nevertheless, with 320 regular species in the country (out of a rather modest national list of barely 420), enough remains to ward off the pangs of nostalgia for British birding .There is simply such a lot to discover. Obviously enough, for most visitors to Ukraine birding begins with first impressions in the cities. There is plenty to be found in Dnepropetrovsk, even though most of its million inhabitants will tell you there is nothing to be seen besides crows and Great Tits. I have to confess I'm not a great patriot of birding in my adoptive city, though this is not because of lack of birds, it is because of the rubbish, drunks, tramps, stray dogs that don't like scopes, dogs being walked that don't like scopes and overcurious humans that think that my scope is a camera, just too much potential hassle. All the same, I appreciate the abundance of common, impossible to ignore species that provide an enlivening backdrop to my everyday life. Foremost among these from their arrival in mid April are the screaming swarms of Swifts that chase in hundreds, often thousands over the city's busiest streets. The high rise Soviet apartment blocks that dominate the city skyline provide countless nesting crevices for Swifts and there's clearly sufficient aerial insect life for their sustenance despite the heavy traffic and heavy industry. The sheer abundance and noise of Swifts here reminds me much more of the masses of Pallid, Alpine and Little Swifts hawking over the historic walls of a Moroccan city like Fez than of the skies above London. Similarly, House Sparrows are far commoner here than in most British towns thanks to the ubiquity of crumbling brick buildings, proliferation of weeds and insects. Away from the centre of the city Tree Sparrows outnumber House Sparrows and are a staple visitor to our bird table.
On my arrival in Dnepropetrovsk my stereotype of the city as a grey blighted post-Soviet industrial dystopia was dispelled at once by a vision of small, neglected, wooded parks, tree lined streets and innumerable private sector yards with fruit and walnut trees. Without wanting to portray the place as an arcadian paradise, I envisage Dnepropetrovsk as a vast open woodland where it's possible to see most of the region's forest species without venturing into a proper forest at all, which is not such a bad idea at the moment with the threat of fire in the nearby Samara Forest. Syrian Woodpeckers are not particularly forest specialists, but, anyway, they are everywhere in the city, having rapidly colonised during the 1980s and early nineties. Less common are Lesser Spotted Woodpeckers but they are certainly easier to find than I've ever known them in Britain even before their population began to slump in the 1990s. Grey-headed Woodpeckers are spreading across the city from their strongholds in the remaining tracts of riverain woodlands and Wrynecks are gratifyingly common in the larger parks where they can be seen feeding on the paths oblivious to the proximity of mothers walking their toddlers. In view of the popularity of Tawny Owls in Ipswich's Christchurch Park, it's worth noting that the dominant owl in Dnepropetrovsk 's parks is the Long-eared Owl , which nesting in old crows' nests does not require old trees with holes . A pair was calling and display flighting in our local Sevastopolski Park this spring, but in early summer I saw and heard no sign of the fluffy young. This may be because the recent renovation of the park has increased the level of disturbance from the public, but fortunately there are plenty of quiet woodlots nearby where parents can lead their newly fledged young.
Dnepropetrovsk's parks support a good variety of passerines, though in the midst of what could prove the hottest summer on record this is not very apparent at the moment, except for the Black Redstarts feeding under the shade of the trees. Collared Flycatchers are widespread and conspicuous following their arrival in the third week of April, more numerous in the open woodland habitat of the city than in the areas of natural woodland outside. Their leisurely squeaking, whistling song can even be heard above the sound of traffic in the city centre. Like their relative, the Pied Flycatcher, they fall silent and become secretive after the young are fledged in late June, although not quite to the same extent. Over the past two weeks their drawn out "heep' calls have increased in frequency, but another characteristic nester in our parks, the Golden Oriole, is staying unusually silent at the moment. You normally hear some subsong in August, even more so the lively "chiff yiff yiff '' contact call, which reminds me somewhat of the Wood Sandpiper's alarm notes. Other species breeding in the quieter parks such as Dnepropetrovsk University Botanic Gardens include Hoopoe, Red -backed Shrike, Thrush Nightingale and Icterine Warbler. As I'm often away in the UK in August it would be worth getting up early to beat the forty degree heat and check if they are still present. There is a curious exodus of a lot of insectivorous species from Ukraine in August and early September. The weather remains hot but the parks and countryside become sadly denuded, and by October when so many continental vagrants, scarce migrants like Barred Warbler or Lesser Grey Shrike are turning up in Britain they have already long vanished from Ukraine. Reports of a build up of migrant passerines on the Suffolk Coast remind me that I should be looking for similar species, Redstarts, Garden and Willow Warblers, and Pied Flycatchers around Dnepropetrovsk, but so far over the past month my birding effort has gone into another group which is also wildly popular with birders on Britain's East Coast, waders .
Despite being nearly 150 miles inland and devoid of any of the cleverly managed wader habitat that forms the centerpiece of so many nature reserves in East Anglia Dnepropetrovsk Oblast boasts some highly productive wader sites. The Dnieper itself is something of a disappointment, being impounded in a succession of sluggish reservoirs by a series of hydroelectric power stations. In the Dnepropetrovsk area the level does not often fall to expose attractive mudbanks. Still, with a predominantly flat landscape and a plethora of lesser, unembanked river systems, there are plenty of natural wetlands. The best known of these to local birders are two shallow saline lakes in the Samara floodplain about fifty kilometers northeast of the city, Soloniy Liman and Bulahovka Liman, both readily accessible by public transport.
Following a slightly disappointing late spring passage both sites have proved rewarding over the past month with shallow water levels, plenty of wet mud exposed and clearly a productive food base for waders, which includes surface insects and brine shrimps. If, as is likely, these sites dry out completely, I'll move on to Petrikovka Fishponds when these are drained later in the autumn. Of these two lakes, Soloniy Liman is the easier to work, having an open shore and only a thin screen of reeds near the village. One has only to choose whether to do the lake clockwise or anticlockwise and whether to wade across to the islands in the centre, which host a large colony of Caspian Gulls whose aggression to intruders fails to deter regular raids from the local pair of Imperial Eagles. As the mud at the lake bottom is mildly treacherous and once caused my friend Volodya to stumble and ruin his bins I don't bother to make for the islands and it's unnecessary for seeing waders anyway. On my last visit to Soloniy Liman on 15 July there were so many waders on the shore that at first I didn't know where to look, quite a contrast to my previous visit of 8 June when apart from the post breeding Redshank flock there were only ten passage waders present, individuals not species . Typically this July assemblage was dominated by Ruff, at least eight hundred adults, probably far more, and all frustratingly skittish, taking off and carrying everything else with them whenever I came within fifty yards of the edge of the flock. Given that they were old enough to have learned about the passion of Russians and Ukrainians for hunting, this behaviour was very understandable. The next most numerous waders were 150 Black-tailed Godwits feeding in the deeper water and over 110 Wood Sandpipers scattered among the Ruff. Wood Sandpiper remains one of my favourite waders partly on account of its elegance, liveliness and attractively speckled plumage and partly because of the realisation that it's an uncommon species in my native Britain, where it's unusual to see even ten together. Scanning through the passage waders I paid little attention to Soloniy Liman's characteristic breeding waders, except to note that a late brood of four Avocets was being fiercely defended by one of its parents against any Ruff that came too close. There was a respectable post breeding gathering of 60 or so Black-winged Stilts and an unusually low gathering of only 28 Kentish Plovers, compared to over a hundred in previous years. The encroachment of vegetation on the bare salt flats where they breed could be one reason for their falling numbers in the area .
One advantage of birding so Far East in Europe is the chance to see some of the continent's scarcer waders on a regular basis. For example Dnepropetrovsk Oblast is squarely on the migration route of Broad-billed Sandpiper, which concentrates in spring and autumn at the Sivash wetlands just a few hours flying time from Dnepropetrovsk. During their migration season, second half of May/early June and early July to mid September; I have a fifty per cent chance of seeing a few at my local wader sites. On this occasion I was delighted to see a flock of 32 adults, characteristically dark plumaged and sluggish in behaviour, in the muddy east bay at the end of my circuit. This total pales beside the several thousand that are often counted at Sivash but it was gratifying to see the pattern confirmed of peak counts occurring in mid July. This Broad billed Sandpiper influx usually coincides with a peak of adult Curlew Sandpipers and, sure enough, there were 24 present in full summer plumage today, mixed in among the Ruff. Again this is nothing compared to the numbers possible at Sivash (e.g. fifty three thousand in August 2006). Far less numerous is the Terek Sandpiper slightly comic-looking to my mind with its shortish yellow legs, pot belly and long upcurved bill, even its call has a tittering, mocking quality. The count of only eleven birds on Ukraine's Black Sea coast in August 2006 was a typical total. On 15 July I had one resting on the ground with the Ruff flock, a much needed year tick which disappeared as soon as the Ruff went up. The two I saw at Bulahovka on 3 August were more confiding as they associated with small waders that tolerated a close approach.
Set in a swathe of marshy meadowland against the backdrop of the Samara Forest, Bulahovka used to present the aspect of a classic steppe lake with open grassy shores, but now it is almost completely encircled by a thick belt of reeds thanks to agricultural runoff. Fortunately, the shallow northwest arm of the lake has preserved an open shore and this is the most reliable place for waders. Of course, my blundering approach frightened off all the Grey Herons, White Storks, dabbling duck and Common Cranes, something that could not be allowed to happen on an RSPB Reserve! But I had come especially to see the waders, which obligingly resettled as soon as they realised I was not going to shoot them. On this occasion, I might have been tempted to do so, had I been an old-style Soviet ornithologist because I saw a juvenile Pratincole standing against the light on the mud, a rarity for Dnepropetrovsk Oblast and not readily assignable to species. I am not unduly shocked that many professional ornithologists in Ukraine are hunters; it is part of the traditional rural lifestyle. What I would not encourage is another enduring tradition, a scientific one, of collecting specimens of rarities for verification and for museum collections. So, having reasonable optics and plenty of time, I manouevred towards a better viewing angle, found that there were two Pratincoles, waited for one to raise its wings, which, of course it did so fleetingly that I had to continue to wait, occasionally flush, wait again and generally follow the birds around until I was sure that from repeated views in good light their underwing coverts were velvety black not chestnut , which, along with other supporting factors, made them Black-winged Pratincoles . A return visit on 8 August confirmed this verdict, only now there were four birds, all scaly juveniles. Although Black-winged Pratincole is now quite a rarity in Ukraine and Collared are breeding reasonably well on the coast, the former used to be the predominant Pratincole inland and bred at Bulahovka till the late 1980s. I was lucky enough to witness an isolated instance of breeding there in 2003 so I wonder whether these birds came from another undetected one-off colony in the area. Alternatively, they might have been refugees from the drought in southern Russia.
Veteran ornithologists based at Dnepropetrovsk National University and even the village biology teacher have often lamented that Bulahovka is only a shadow of what it used to be. On many days I'm inclined to agree, but on these two recent visits everything seemed to be in its proper place. The wader inlet held a decent twenty three species of waders including two juvenile Red-necked Phalaropes, my first of the autumn and eight juvenile Marsh Sandpipers feeding up to their bellies in the shallows. While watching the Pratincoles I enjoyed some other stunning birds in the same scope view; moulting adult White-winged Black Terns, adult Little Stints, an adult Sanderling and adult Curlew Sandpipers, now blotchy russet and white below. Raptors included a light morph and a dark morph Booted Eagle, a young White-tailed Eagle, two adult male Montagu's Harriers and a female .Water levels on the village duck pond had fallen, making the place ideal for crakes and, sure enough, I found an adult male Little Crake preening at the edge of the reeds at my first scan. It is strange to think that I didn't get Little Crake onto my Dnepropetrovsk Oblast list till September 2002, but the renowned pioneer ornithologist of the region Dr Walch had the same problem getting a view of this skulking species a century ago. It's sad to note that field guide maps showing Baillon's Crakes right across Ukraine are almost certainly wrong; there have been hardly any reliable recent records.
By the time this newsletter is published Suffolk will have enjoyed another enviable scattering of autumn rarities while it is questionable whether I will have even added to my Dnepropetrovsk Oblast list. There is a rich variety of regular species here, many of them rare in the UK, but the potential for vagrants cannot approach that of any stretch of coastline in Northwest Europe. My two Pectoral Sandpiper records notwithstanding (and they could be from Siberia), eastern Ukraine is too far east for regular American waders - the Carpathian Mountains may deter them from venturing beyond Hungary. Equally, reverse migrating Siberian passerines are unlikely to turn up often in the field deep inside inland Europe, and the Black Sea coast is surely too far south to get even a fraction of the numbers occurring on Britain's East Coast. All the same, a birder who relishes a break from the crowds could do a lot worse than visit Ukraine. The country is grossly underwatched, entry is visa free to EU citizens and the potential for ornithological discovery is enticing
Sunday, 7 November 2010
