Azerbaijan Days Seven and Eight

Day six was spent in Shirvan NP and day seven was spent near Baku exploring the Absheron NP. A few photo highlights below and updated trip report HERE.

Unfortunately it's time up for us looking for 'Omid', the Siberian Crane which is still in Iran and still not started migrating north. It's now the 6th March and over the last near decade it has migrated between 26th Feb and 4th March so it is late this year. A couple of teams are still in the game and are staying for another week but our team only had a week gamble on it.

A great week and an amazing country to visit. 'Bird' of the trip was Marbled Polecat, not an easy mammal to see in the Western Palearctic. Caspian Tit was a lifer and also a nice selection of new subspecies (will do a separate post on that) the highlight being Siberian Buff-bellied Pipit. Will need to check some photos but we might have had Steppe Gull (Barabensis) which will be a new one too. Other mammal ticks included Goitered Gazelle and Williams' Jerboa. The two frogs we saw might have been Long-legged Wood Frog and Lake Frog (both lifers) but will need to confirm. 

Other highlights included visiting the Hirkan National Park and the only sub-tropical temperate forest in the Western Palearctic (where Leopards and Hyenas still occur amongst endemic trees covered in moss and ferns), the Steppe habitat of Shirvan was a sensational environment, the Caspian Sea wetlands were epic and the semi-arid environments of Gobustan and mud volcanoes were like a moon scape. Unfortunately we didn't get time to visit the Caucasus (but we've visited the area before in Georgia). Checking out the Absheron Peninsula for potential future vagrant hunting was interesting too.  

White-tailed Lapwings near Shirvan

Isabelline Wheatear in Shirvan

Isabelline Shrike in Shirvan (above and below). We also had Great Grey Shrike presumably of the homeyeri race. 

White-fronted Geese at Shirvan. Shirvan is such a diverse habitat with large numbers of water birds and steppe birds together. 

Black Francolin at Shirvan

Presumed third cycle Armenian Gull (will check when back home). Peter Adriaens suggests this could even be a dark Caspian. The tongue is too long on p10 for Armenian. 

Presumed Russian Common Gull (above and below) First-winter above which appears quite narrow and long-winged typical of heinei. The adult below shows a largely unmarked head , only a small sliver of a white tongue-tip to p7 and a long wedge of black on the outer web of p6 which is consistent with heinei.  

Golden Jackals at Shirvan on the camera trap