Georgia

Not long back from an eleven day trip to Georgia and Armenia. I went with Garry Armstrong, Davy Steele, Wilton Farrelly and Ian Graham where we spent three full days in the Kazbegi area of Georgia. From there we moved South into Armenia where we picked up Paul French who joined us for the rest of the trip.
The trip got off to a disastrous start for me as my Canon 7d had a very nasty fall from the back of the bus when leaving Tbilisi airport in the early hours of 1st May. It along with the 400mm lens was out of action for the duration, a very sickening feeling.
So anyway I had to make do with a little bit of good old fashioned digi-scoping, not quite the same but better than nothing I suppose.

We managed to get two the main target birds on the first day -Caucasian Black Grouse, Caucasian Snowcock. I haven't had much luck with some alpine species in Spain and Morocco in the past so it was good to finally see Alpine Chough, Alpine Accentor and White-winged Snowfinch.
The Georgian part of the trip was timed to coincide with a low snow line which normally comes right down to the village of Kazbegi/Stepantsminda and with it Great Rosefinch and Güldenstädt's Redstart also have to come down with it. However there wasn't much snow this winter in the area and with the Spring melt, the snow line was up around the 3000m mark unlike the normal 2200m. Paul had both species in the village while leading a Sunbird tour here the previous week but no one had seen the redstart during the whole week we were there and only a handful of rosefinches had been seen down low.

We hiked up to 2900m on the second day to see if the two species had retreated up to the higher elevations. After a bit of searching we managed to track down 6 - 8 Great Rosefinches which gave distant but prolonged views. The males were amazing looking things. Despite much searching and upteen Black Redstarts (both semirufus & ochruros) we just couldn't kick out a Güldenstädt's. Other good birds seen over the course of the three days included several Lammergeier (cracking birds & WP tick), Golden Eagle, Alpine Swift, Crag Martin, Horned Lark, Water Pipit (very common), Rock Thrush (another WP tick), Mountain Chiffchaff, Wallcreeper (feeding on a four feet high stone wall in the village of Kobi), Lesser Grey Shrike, Red-fronted Serin and Rock Bunting.

I'll update the blog in the next while with the Armenia part of the trip.

amicorum Ring Ouzel, huge amount of white on the wings, amazing looking in flight.

amicorum Ring Ouzel

Caucasian Snowcock, squint and you can just see it!

Caucasian Snowcock

First-summer male Caucasian Black Grouse. This guy was hidding under a rock from us. Note reduced red wattle and brown tones to head, forehead in particular hinting at the age.

Tree Pipit, common in the conifer plantations.

Red-fronted Serin, quite common around the village, took a while to get good views. 

White-winged Snwfinch, only one pair seen in the entire trip.

Male Red-backed Shrike

Male Wallcreeper

Male Wallcreeper

Kazbegi village with Mount Kazbek in the background.

Gorge up from Sameba Church which had Great Rosefinch.

Gergeti glacier on Mount Kazbek.

Kazbegi from the Mount Kazbek side with the conifer plantation and the monsterous Rooms Hotel beside it.

Russian border with Georgia, a Georgian solider appeared from the bushes shortly after this was taken to tell us to feck off!

The white splashes near the top of this cliff face were Griffon Vulture nests.

Male Eastern Tur

Group watching Caucasian Snowcock which was first picked up by Chris Lansdell, Justin Lansdell and Andy Wilkinson.

Dusky Warbler

Headed out to Inishmore to catch up with Hugh Delaney's Dusky Warbler. I saw the Dusky at Power Head, Co. Cork in 2009 but this was too much to resist. Could be a while yet before another shows up here again. This will be the tenth Irish record is accepted. There have only two in UK this Autumn up until the Friday both of which were on Shetland and one of those was also found on the Friday evening.
This is the first good Sibe for Inishmore. Previous to this we've had about three Red-breasted Flycatchers, three Barred Warblers and numerous Yellow-browed Warblers including two different day counts of at least ten birds. So it was good to see that some good birds from the East can reach this West coast location. The only other West coast Dusky record refers to a bird picked up injured in Limerick on 5th December 1970 that had been ringed in the Calf of Man the same October (I think). Cork seems to have the near monopoly on Irish records with seven of the nine total, the remaining Irish record is from Wexford.
We searched for the bird for a few hours in the morning but couldn't pick it up. It showed fairly well in the brambles and bracken for Hugh the previous evening and was quite vocal. We split up and I headed West up as far as Bun Gabhla, the best being a Great Tit and about 3 Chiffchaffs. On my way back I stopped off at the Dusky location for another look when I got a call from Hugh to say he probably had it again but couldn't be 100% sure. Thankfully after about a half hour wait I had in the Scyamores in the main garden and later in the Fuschia and brambles but it was more typically elusive and just occasionally calling very Wren like.

Despite Hugh's best efforts to try and convince me to hang around till Sunday I headed back to get the ferry to get the five o'clock boat off. I had just handed back my rented bike when Hugh rang to say he had a Galway tick for me at Kilmurvey - a Ring Ouzel. Got another bike back but didn't get far as the chain slipped while changing gears. It got wedged and I just couldn't get the bloody thing unstuck. Third bike of the day and I was on my way all the way back up to Kilmurvey. I was a bit worried that by the time I got back up again it may have gone to roost with the Redwing and Blackbirds it was associating with. After a 20 minute search we managed to pin it down again.
We also had the Woodchat again but like the Rouzel the light was rapidly going so the shots leave alot to be desired.
I had a completely sleepless night in the hostel and was completely exhausted today. The wind really got up as it was forecasted so I left on the early ferry.