Inadvertent Bare-naked Birding in Bosnia

I spent a part of this week in Central Bosnia, traveling around and seeing some of the historic sites. Since I wasn’t planning on doing any birding and was trying to travel as light as possible, I left my binoculars in Sarajevo with my telephoto lens (you can probably guess where this is going already).

One of the towns I visited was Jajce, the quaint, historic, mixed Muslim and Catholic town between the more substantial hubs of Travnik and Banja Luka. Outside Jajce are two lakes known as the Pliva lakes (after the river that forms them) and I decided to take a walk one morning to see these lakes for myself.

Before I had even reached the lakes, I began to regret not having binoculars as I located a pair of white-throated dippers singing and chasing each other around the river. When I arrived at the first lake (the Small Pliva Lake), I could see a number of mallards as well as a group of great cormorants roosting along the bank in the center of the lake.

The Pliva Lakes

Much to my surprise, as I walked along, I started to notice flocks of ducks that didn’t look like mallards, but were too far away to tell. I pulled out my camera with its small lens attached (the only photography I had planned on doing this trip was architecture and landscape) and by zooming in heavily on the photos, could just make out eurasian wigeon. I hadn’t expected waterfowl to be on this lake at all since I had assumed it was rather shallow and a lake in the middle of the mountains in Bosnia just didn’t strike me as the best wintering waterfowl spot. Now I was really regretting not having binoculars. This regret only increased as I continued to walk around the lake and gadwall, little grebe, and northern shoveller all put in appearances. I also noticed an interesting bird on the far shore of the lake. Using my camera as best I could as binoculars, it looked suspiciously loon-like. However, that was the best I could do from such a distance.

When I reached the far end of the lake, I decided to walk back down the other side, hoping I would be able to locate the loon lookalike from earlier. There I found another surprise, a red-crested pochard! A lifer for me and I bird I have been hoping to find for a while.

More flocks of wigeon, shoveller, and gadwall milled about and I spotted a group of suspiciously ferruginous duck-looking birds. Unfortunately, they were way too distant for my camera-turned-binoculars.

Despite this, I did manage to catch up with the potential loon and was able to confirm at as an Arctic loon (black-throated diver), the first eBird record for Bosnia and another lifer! Persistence pays off in birding, even when you don’t have binoculars!

Arctic Loon (Black-throated Diver)

I’ve spent the days since ruminating on the status of this bird in the country. Presumably they can be found wintering off Bosnia’s very limited (only 9km long) coastline. They also must migrate through the interior of the country, although I would suspect they are somewhat scarce as migrants (there aren’t a huge number of eBird records from the interior of even the more heavily eBirded Western Balkan countries).

eBird records of Arctic loon from the Western Balkans (including my Pliva Lakes one)

The Handbook of Birds of the World cites them as wintering, “occasionally inland,” as this individual is presumably doing at this time of year. I can find one other online record, from the 90s in the Mostar area (iGoTerra). There is also mention of a pair of Arctic loons, again at the Pliva Lakes, in November 2007 from a BirdForum thread. In short, I suspect they are somewhat scarce in the interior of the country and probably a pretty decent bird, but certainly not as rare as “first eBird record” would suggest.

Overall, a pretty good morning and I was able to pull a good deal of success out of an outing where I was vastly underprepared to go birding!

Albania’s Natural Crown Jewel: Karavasta National Park

When I first visited Tirana, about a week ago, I met for a beer with Taulent Bino of the Albanian Ornithological Society (AOS). The AOS, for those who don’t know, is doing some really valuable work with conservation and promotion of ecotourism in Albania and it is really great to see such a strong group working in such an underbirded country. The main project they’re working on at the moment is opposing a proposed urbanisation plan for Divajka-Karavasta National Park. More information about the urbanisation can be found on their website or on their Facebook page.  Essentially it would be a catastrophe, drastically reducing the size of the vital coastal wetlands in the park and causing a vast amount of damage to the area’s wildlife. In Tirana, I arranged to go with Taulent and a couple other biologists to Karavasta for some birding and specifically to count Dalmatian pelicans within the park.

I had been wanting to bird Karavasta since first researching Albania as it is most definitely the most famous birding site in the country and contains great habitat for the aforementioned pelicans as well as many waders, shorebirds, waterfowl and others. Consequently, I was very excited for the opportunity to visit.

A few days later I returned to Tirana from the city of Berat, and was tried to get some sleep before the next morning’s early departure. Sadly however, when you have to wake up early for birding, no sleep is enough and I staggered out my hostel around 5:40, tired but ready for some birds.

The first stop was at a dock on the Karavasta Lagoon. The lagoon is mostly quiet this time of year but a bunch of greater flamingos were distantly present, as well as a group of Dalmatian pelicans so far out I could barely make them out.

Black-headed Gull

The next stop, an observation tower overlooking some of the many wetlands in the park, was much more productive. Eurasian coots filled your binocular field anywhere you looked; big flocks of Eurasian teal, northern shovelers, and Eurasian wigeon flushed and shuffled themselves in the distance; Eurasian marsh harriers catered over the reeds; big flocks of flamingos noisily honked, wading up to their bodies in the deep water. Of course there were pelicans too, with a group of three milling about. It wasn’t until this point that I realized how big these birds really are. When they swam near the flamingos they dwarfed them and their bulky bodies made the ubiquitous coots and ducks look like mere specks.

Eurasian Marsh-harrier

Greater Flamingos

From the observation tower a number of good raptors were spotted as well, including a flyby osprey which caught a fish and then vacated the premises and, the highlight for me, my lifer greater spotted eagle, a pretty good bird for the area, which slowly flew closer and closer to us until it was directly circling the tower, giving a great opportunity for study.

Greater Spotted Eagle

As we drove to the next spot, we stopped to chat with some guys who worked at a pumphouse in the park and, this being the Balkans where hospitality is treasured and people are exceptionally friendly, we ended up being invited for coffee and rakija (a fruit brandy which is extremely popular in the Balkans and also extremely high in alcohol). we accepted and spent the next half hour at his house sipping rather liberally filled glasses of rakija and eating locally grown oranges.

Birders!

Drinks finished, we went in search of shorebirds, spotting the eagle again on the way as well as our first hen harrier of the day. Common greenshanks and redshanks flushed from the edges of marshes and ditches as we drove down waterlogged, mud covered tracks before arriving to a beach along the Adriatic where the real shorebirding began. Sanderling and dunlin were the main species present but, through the biting ocean wind, we were able to find a couple black-bellied plovers as well as two Kentish plovers: a lifer for me!

Shorebirds ticked, we headed into a nearby town for coffee with one of the wardens for the park (yes, the second coffee stop of the day, this is Albania after all). After we were refueled with coffee and rakija, we stopped at a couple more places to count pelicans, took the car to a car wash (it really needed it after all the mud in the refuge), and then headed back to Tirana. For the pelican count that morning, we had tallied 72, further proving the ornithological value of this National Park.

Dalmatian Pelicans

Unfortunately, that was the end of my last day in Albania… I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the country, particularly the birding. It is a highly underrated country which has some great birds and some really important habitat for wildlife. In light of this, the work that the AOS is doing is incredible and it is well worth checking out their website to see just how much awesome stuff they’re doing. And of course, many thanks to them and Taulent for the opportunity to visit Karavasta! The birding was excellent and I even managed to get my 100th species for Albania, Eurasian curlew!!

My 100th bird species for Albania

 

That OTHER Red Crossbill Complex

One of the newest, most cutting edge challenges of modern, ABA Area birding is identification of red crossbills to type. For those not aware, it has been shown that red crossbills in North America can be divided into as many as ten “types” which are differentiable in the field mainly by distinctive flight calls. It is thought that the crossbills are radiating to adapt to forage in different species of conifer. This has all become common knowledge in the birding community in the past few years, with many birders actively seeking to record crossbills in the field and then identify the recordings (here‘s a good example of me doing the same thing with a vagrant flock of red crossbills in Pennsylvania). What is considerably less common knowledge is that red crossbills in Europe (typically known as common crossbill) also have types (the first observations of which were made by Magnus Robb in Dutch Birding). If little is known about the types in North America, next to nothing is known about the types in Europe; identification of crossbills here is very much on the cutting edge.

I was lucky enough this week to encounter a couple groups of crossbills in the (awesomely named) Accursed Mountains National Park in Kosovo and, despite being stupid enough to leave my microphone at my hostel, was still able to capture a mediocre iPhone recording of a couple of birds.

Crossbill Land, Accursed Mountains National Park, Kosovo

But before diving into my recording, a brief overview of European crossbill types is in order. To begin with, crossbills typically have two distinct calls, a flight call and an excitement call (typically used for alarm or to call in other crossbills). Both of these call types can typically be identified to type. There are 8 types of crossbill in Europe which are each assigned letters (unlike the numbers used in North America). They are as follows:

Type A- Wandering Crossbill, a common and widespread irruptive type.

Type B- Bohemian Crossbill, specializes in black pine and apparently found in Central Europe, the Balkans, and Turkey.

Type C- Glip Crossbill, seemingly the commonest (at least in Western Europe).

Type X- Parakeet Crossbill, another common Western European type.

Type D- Phantom Crossbill, reminiscent of “Enigmatic crossbill” of the ABA Area in that it is little known and appears to vanish for years at a time.

Type E- British Crossbill, name says it all.

Type F- Scarce Crossbill, only recorded from the Low Countries.

This information has mostly come from the excellent book The Sound Approach to Birding which has a great section on crossbill ID.

Now back to the crossbills in Kosovo. The recording in its mostly unedited entirety can be viewed here. Not surprisingly given the above information, the recording revealed them to be Type B (Bohemian). This is seemingly the resident type in the various Balkan mountain ranges.

The majority of the recording is a lone bird giving excitement calls. As you can see in the below spectrogram, these are multibanded (although the low quality of the recording obscures many of the bands) and high pitched. A listen to the recording itself will show a distinct nasal quality of the notes. These are all characteristics of Type B.

Excitement Calls

More distinctive to the ear, is the flight calls of the small flock which comes overhead towards the end of the recording. These calls are high, upswept “weet” notes which, again, are distinctive of Type B.

Circled Examples of Flight Calls

Also note the (barely audible) fractions of song in the middle of the recording.

It was really great to get my first experience with European crossbill types. This kind of thing is a fantastic way to broaden your birding skills and also is contributing in a valuable way to science. In this case for instance, this is only the third crossbill recording I can find from the Balkans (with an additional one from Slovenia and one from Bulgaria) and is the only one of the three which has been identified to type. It cannot be stressed enough how little is known about this fascinating complex: for example, eBird output shows no records of Type B at all!!

If I encounter more crossbills here in the Balkans, I hope that I will be able to obtain some better recordings and perhaps see if any other types (namely widespread, irruptive ones) are showing up in the area. But in the mean time, I am content with what might be the first fully identified red crossbills in the Balkan Peninsula.

eBird checklist: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S40219439

Mammal Watching Trip Report — American Southwest

The mammal trip report from the young birder road trip I took through Texas and Arizona this summer is now posted on the mammal watching forums. It’s not birds but hey, it’s pretty cool anyway.

Link: http://www.mammalwatching.com/2017/10/09/new-trip-report-texas-arizona-2017/

Robust Cottontail, Big Bend National Park

Northern Albanian Mountains and Marshes

Last week I crossed the border from Montenegro into Albania by bus. I’m in Albania and Kosovo for about a month, and have been doing a little bit of birding while here. This has been a fascinating experience as these are incredibly underbirded countries and so, in many cases, I have had to locate birding sites on my own with limited outside knowledge.

My first birding stop was the Kune-Vain-Tale (quite a mouthful of a name) Nature Reserve outside the town of Lezha. I had found this place randomly on Google Maps the day before and was able to take a bus from Shkodër, where I was staying, to Lezha and then a taxi from there to the reserve. Despite this complicated itinerary, I was welcomed by three greater flamingos feeding in the lagoon which composes much of the reserve. A lifer and a big target for me in Southeastern Europe out of the way in ten seconds was a harbinger of good things to come. And good things did indeed come. Over the course of the next three hours I walked the road through the reserve and picked up a good assortment of waterbirds including great bittern, water rail, and ferruginous duck (another big target).

Notice the squad of flamingos on the left

Coastal wetlands like this one along the Adriatic in Albania are critical habitat for migratory and wintering waterfowl (namely ferruginous duck), shorebirds, and waders and many (including this one) are listed as Important Bird Areas.

A few days later I found myself in the Albanian Alps inside Valbona National Park. The habitat variety of country’s like Albania is staggering as, within only an hour or so of driving, coastal marshes and Mediterranean plain give way to bold, dramatic mountain peaks.

And bold and dramatic they are, making for beautiful hiking. This is the heartland of Albania, mountains filled since time immemorial with mountain tribes who have fended off invading forces as disparate as the Romans, the Ottomans, and the Serbs. I doubt any of those armies had time for birding, although they were really missing out, as it is quite good!

During my day and half long visit, I hiked up Maja e Thatë, one of the many mountains above the Valbona Valley.

Ravens flew overhead, mistle thrush burst from the shrubbery, and a grey-headed woodpecker made an early appearance (one of my last needed European woodpecker species). As the trail got steeper and I got more tired, the birding got even more rewarding with a few spotted nutcrackers giving good looks, and mixed species flocks of tits giving me a substitute for the fall warblers I’m missing in the US.

Spotted Nutcracker

The highlight for me however came in the huge flock of alpine chough which circled around the mountain peak and then flew, spiraling acrobatically and calling raucously, right over my head.

I adore these high elevation corvids and have been fascinated with them since I, as a little kid in England, flipping through a European bird book for the first time, discovered they existed.  It was also great to get better looks than I had at my lifer in the Tien Shan Mountains in Kyrgyzstan.

One Section of the Alpine Chough Flock

The hike back down featured less birds but a nice, although distant, look at a calling black woodpecker was nice (it’s a species I can never get tired of).

Black Woodpecker

Valbona National Park

Albania is an incredibly underbirded country (as are most of its Balkan neighbours) but it is not at all from lack of quality. This is a country that deserves much more attention from birders who could help fill in the gaps in birding knowledge or, at the very least, appreciate it’s stunning natural beauty.

European Serin

Birding Gornje Telelovo Polje in Sarajevo Canton

I’ve finally arrived in Bosnia and Herzegovina and, while I frankly ought to be looking for apartments, I couldn’t resist the temptation to get out birding on my first morning. This weekend is also the Big Sit so it was even harder to pass up the temptation of being the first ever participant in the event in Bosnia.

At 7, I left my hostel in Baščaršija (Sarajevo’s old town) and eventually got a taxi west. After running every red light on the way there (this is Bosnia after all) the cab dropped me in the small suburb of Doglodi, and from there I walked down the road to the area of farm fields around the confluence of the Bosna and Miljacka Rivers that is known as Gornje Telelovo Polje.

Common ravens were the first birds to welcome me as I entered the site with at least 10 hanging around. I then started to pick up on very large numbers of white wagtails foraging in the fields and flying overhead. This would be a near constant throughout the morning.

I eventually reached the spot I planned on doing the Big Sit from and settled down to bird. Grey herons flew overhead and Eurasian tree sparrow chirped from the bushes but the real highlight was when a large flock of rock pigeons and Eurasian jackdaws flushed up from one of the fields, and what was with them? Two ruff! A lifer for me and a bird I had chased and dipped on before in the ABA Area. A flyover flock of common snipe was a nice addition as well.

Gornje Telelovo Polje

However, I was so excited to be out and birding in Europe that I couldn’t stay still for long and, after tallying 23 species for the Big Sit, set out to explore the rest of the Polje with what remained of the morning. Across the bridge over the Bosna, a large flock of European serin with a couple chiffchaff greeted me. Across the road from them, a flock of Eurasian siskin foraged in some conifers and a common sandpiper flushed from the river bank.

At the confluence of the rivers itself, a group of mallards was searched and found to contain a number of Eurasian green-winged teal and a female pintail. Three green sandpipers (another lifer) were foraging in the shallows as well.

Green Sandpipers

Some patience and a bit of pishing brought a small group of warblers into view, including willow and two sedge (the latter is still flagged as rare on eBird is Bosnia despite not being so… one of the frustrating things about birding in a severely underbirded country).

By this point however, the morning was wearing off and so I started to walk back towards the city, although not without getting a third lifer, whinchat, and snagging a flyover great egret, my first in Bosnia.

I finished with 43 species, overall not a bad first morning of birding!

eBird Checklist: http://ebird.org/ebird/view/checklist/S39614218

A Vagrant is a Hard Thing to Pass Up

This past week, a very interesting bird was found. The first state record for Maryland of sharp-tailed sandpiper (ABA Code 3) was discovered just south of Baltimore and about a 4 hour drive from Pittsburgh. I went back and forth about whether or not to chase it for a long time, weighing my options. There were a lot of cons: I needed to start packing to move apartments, I couldn’t find someone to carpool with, I had an appointment I couldn’t get out of in the morning, and I was nervous about driving 4 hours for a bird having just dipped the week before on the Pennsylvania white-winged tern (also 4 hours away). However, two massive pros outweighed all of it:

1. It was a sharp-tailed sandpiper.
2. There were a BUNCH of other shorebirds being seen at the same spot, including 8 Hudsonian godwits, a needed lifer for me.

So I went. And it was well worth it.

The place was absolutely swarming with shorebirds. It was almost overwhelming the number of birds present. The location is a large pond next to the Chesapeake Bay. The water is rather shallow and for whatever reason a huge number of shorebirds have congregated there this season. The star of the show was being seen when I arrived and I was able to get great looks at the sharp-tailed sandpiper.

Sharp-tailed Sandpiper

The bird stood out sharply (no pun intended) as the darkest bird in the flock and at one point foraged next two a couple of pectoral sandpipers, nicely showing the key ID points between the two similar species.

Fascinatingly, the sharp-tails that show up on the east coast are thought to be reverse migrants. This means essentially that instead of flying across North America from the Bering Sea as you might intuitively think would be the route a Siberian bird might take, they fly from their breeding grounds in Siberia the opposite direction of their wintering grounds in Australasia. This route takes them across the Arctic Circle and down into the eastern US. Quite a trip!

The eBird data below shows scattered reports of sharp-tails from the ABA Area away from the west coast (west coast birds are likely off course migrants from the normal route) and illustrates the vagrancy patterns of these reverse migrants.

eBird Range Map of Sharp-tailed Sandpiper

In addition to the sharp-tailed, the Hudsonian godwits were also present when I arrived. Not only was this a very long overdue lifer for me, but they were also the final world godwit species I needed after seeing black-tailed in Europe and a vagrant bar-tailed in California.

A Godwit Squad

A couple merrily spinning Wilson’s phalaropes rounded out the trio of shorebird rarities present at the location, since sadly the previous day’s red-necked phalaropes were nowhere to be found.

In addition to these birds, a Baird’s sandpiper put in a brief appearance and a single western sandpiper foraged no more than 15 feet from the onlookers. However, the sheer number of shorebirds was a spectacle in and of itself. Over 20 stilt sandpipers foraged in the lagoon with 5-6 white-rumps. These numbers are even more amazing when you consider that even one of these birds is a good find just 4 hours away in western Pennsylvania. A couple short-billed dowitcher, hordes of yellowlegs, swarms of peeps, and a few scattered pectorals completed the picture.

Stilt Sandpiper

The birds were confiding too, most highlighted by the flocks of peeps foraging for insects on the berm overlooking the pond. Large groups of semipalamted and least sandpipers were even coming as close as a couple feet from the adoring crowds photographing them. A couple of times I found my camera unable to focus on the scurrying pipers, a rare problem to have when photographing shorebirds.

Least Sandpipers

There had also been a yellow-headed blackbird seen in the area over the past couple a days (a product of the Patagonia Picnic Table Effect). However, the flock of blackbirds it was bumming around with had yet to put in an appearance. This turned out not to be a problem as some expert scoping by a birder present revealed a flash of yellow in amongst some blackbirds way on the other side of the lagoon.

With all the rarities in the bag and my brain full and my eyes hurting from shorebird observation, I loaded up the car and headed back towards Pittsburgh.

However, this wasn’t without a quick stop as it was going dark at Somerset Lake in Somerset County, Pennsylvania where spotted and solitary sandpipers and a continuing American golden-plover nailed me my 14th, 15th, and 16th shorebird species of the day. Quite a success!

Shorebirds in the Calm Before the Migrant Storm

This week was that unfortunate time of year when basically every breeding passerine species is hunkered down and impossible to find and its too early for any migrants to speak of. Basically the only good birds around are shorebirds, and I live in a famously shorebird lacking area. Consequently, I have to drive long distances to get any decent birding.

This week I picked Conneaut, Ohio as my spot to head for the shorebirds I never get closer to home. This location on the shore of Lake Erie is an excellent vantage point for shorebird observation with birds often allowing very close approach and a great potential for rarities.

Since my last visit, an observation tower on the sand spit had been installed and it was here that I set up and waited the arrival of shorebirds. It wasn’t an incredible day by any means but shorebirds came in waves, seemingly dropping in out of nowhere.

The first flock was mostly semipalmated sandpipers with a single Baird’s mixed in. When these flew off, they were quickly replaced by a flock of least sandpipers and another crisp Baird’s. This flock was much more confiding than the other one, giving great photographic opportunities as they fed along the beach. Their plumage was immaculate (the perks of birding this early in the season!) with one least in particular sporting bright rufous plumage!

Baird’s Sandpiper

Brightly Plumaged Least Sandpiper

Waiting for new shorebird turnover was hardly boring either. A Bonaparte’s gull flew by at one point, bald eagles scaring gulls were entertaining to watch, a couple yellowlegs (both species) and two semipalmated plovers moved around the beach all morning, and trying to turn a double-crested cormorant into a neotropic is always a fun diversion.

Semiaplamted Plover

The shorebird activity seemed to have mostly burned off by afternoon however and, except for a flyby sanderling, nothing much more of note was seen and I eventually headed back to Pittsburgh. August had temporarily satiated my burning desire for birds and successfully braced me oncoming onslaught of migrants.

An Important Announcement!

Work on this blog has, unfortunately, been temporarily halted with the recent death of my computer. I am still working on getting set up again with photos, but should be able to write again as normal in a couple days. However, in the meantime, I have an announcement. As a graduated from high school this June, I am leaving my home state of Pennsylvania. Most of my peers are headed immediately to college, but I am instead off on a gap year!

In early October, I will be moving to Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina!! I love Sarajevo and Bosnia and am beyond excited to be able to call it home for a year. I will be using it as a base from which to travel in the Balkans, Middle East, and Caucasus. Since I will be utilising public transport, birding won’t always be possible, but I should have opportunities to do a good bit of it (in particular, by making use of local birders). I am particularly excited to go birding in Israel, Jordan, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Egypt, and of course Bosnia!

I very much look forwards to updating this blog with my birding during my travels! Additionally, the gap year more generally can be followed on Instagram: @AidanJPlace.

The Famous Mostar Bridge, Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina

Panama Preview

I just returned from a two week whirlwind birding tour of Panama over spring break. As it was my first time doing a concerted birding trip to Central America, I got a whole mess of lifers. In lieu of a complete retelling, which will be forthcoming, here’s a brief photographic preview.

Resplendent Quetzal

Orange-bellied Trogon

Barred Antshrike

White-necked Jacobin