Text © Tomas Axén HaraldssonPhotos © Johan Stenlund The third (following April 2012 and October 2013) arranged group trip by Swedish birders took place 5-13 May 2014 and included the highlights of eastern Azerbaijan: a few days in the Greater Caucasus, the steppes of Shirvan, the wetlands at Machmud Chala and Kizil Agach as well… Continue reading Azerbaijan Trip 5-13 May 2014
Text & Photos © M. Heiß The second half of our round trip through Azerbaijan led us along the Greater Caucasus range. We visted the alpine zone of the Shahdag National Park around the villages Laza and Xinaliq, which produced some good views of the Caucasian specialities. Welcome to Laza - steep gravel roads need… Continue reading Spring Trip from 21 May to 13 June 2013 (Part 2 – Greater Caucasus)
Text & Photos © M. Heiß Despite this year’s spring trip did not focus on birds, as the interest of the tourist group was in plants and landscape, we had a plenty of good views on the local bird species. The trip started in the capital Baku and we quickly headed south to the Shirvan… Continue reading Spring Trip from 21 May to 13 June 2013 (Part 1 – Shirvan NP, Talysh and Zuvand)
Text & Photos © M. Heiß The results of a recently published article propose to differentiate four species within the greater spotted woodpecker complex. One of them is Dendrocopos (major) poelzami that occurs in northern Iran and the adjacent Talysh Mountains in Azerbaijan. The latter is the only place within the Western Palearctic where it… Continue reading New bird species for Azerbaijan?
Text & Photos © M. Heiß In April, a group of Swedish birdwatchers visited my counting spot at Besh Barmag during their trip through Azerbaijan. Please find their excellent trip report on Swedish Club 300 or netfugl.dk. Birdwatching tourists - a rare sight, but with increasing annual numbers.
Text & Photos © K. Gauger Again I did my every year's spring trip and it turned out to be one of the best ever! Manly because of my visit to Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic (NAR) with Mario Camici and others. But more of that later... Already the time in mainland Azerbaijan was great with 215… Continue reading May trip with Nakhchivan
Text & Photos © K. Gauger It will take some time until my next trip to Aze. Meanwhile some older pics here... Eastern Black-eared Wheatear juv Pied Wheatear, or a hybrid with Black-eared? Rollers are common in agricultural land and the lower mountains despite intensive hunting Chukars occur widespread in the semi desert mountains Tawny… Continue reading breeding birds of the foothills
Text & Photos © K. Gauger Slender-billed Gulls can be seen regugularly in small numbers Pallas's Gulls are winter visitors along the coast and around the lagre inland lakes Mediterranean Gulls have some small colonies here Dalmatian Pelicans pass in flocks and also spend the winter in the wetlands Arctic Skuas are regular migrants in… Continue reading along the coast
Text & Photos © K. Gauger The breeding birds in Aze are Black-headeds but during migration millions of Yellow Wagtails of different subspecies pass through. Here are some of them... male feldegg, local breeding bird female feldegg, in a resting flock I was very confused, when I saw this bird! It turned out to be… Continue reading Yellow Wagatils
Text & Photos © K. Gauger My second trip this spring started on 23.05. with a dof travel group. A detailed trip report will be available soon, so I wont write much here. Again we started south and had still lots of migrating passerines in the first days, including two singing Blyth's Reed Warblers! One… Continue reading dof travel
Birding Azerbaijan 