Some birds from Azerbaijan

This post shows some birds (and scenery) from a 2 week trip (11-24 Sept of this year). Above is a Black-winged Pratincole.

Sunrise over Baku on my first day.

Sunrise over the Caspian Sea, 100 km North of Baku.

A view of the coastline, from the mountains at Corbustan, approx 50 km S from Baku.

A typical coastal landscape, with the oil legacy clearly evident.

Coastal bushes c 100 km North of Baku where I spent most of the trip, looking for migrants.

My campsite in the Caucasus.

A rather wonderful sediment-laden river, Caucasus

Lammergeier and Wallcreeper territory in the Caucasus

Red-breasted Fly - an extremely common migrant

Red-backed Shrike; another common migrant

White Wagtail; note the extensively white greater coverts of the albas in this area.

Rock Sparrow

The Caucasus race of Water Pipit (coutellii) - a really sandy buffy taxon that took me by surprise

Another example.

Horned Lark - rather tatty at this time of year.

Wallcreeper

The same bird

And again.

Long-legged Buzzard

The same bird - the tail pattern gives it away as a juv

Pied Wheatear

A rather stunning Yellow Wagtail. As always, autumn birds provided headaches; I need to do some desk research when time permits, to see if this can be identified.

Ditto.

Blue Cheeked Bee-eater.

Lesser Kestrel

Roller

Rose-coloured Starling

Lesser Whitethroat

Black Redstart. More work needs doing on these; textbooks suggest ochoros should occur in Caucasus but this looks more like (but perhaps not a perfect) a semirufous to my eye.

Another.

The same individual as above

The stonechats were some of the more interesting and troublesome birds. I will add a post dedicated to these later, but this bird most resembled variagatus due to the extensive white in the bases of the outer feathers which was clearly visible in flight or when it tail-flicked.

Pallid Harrier

Pallid Harrier

Caspian Gulls in the Caspian - Day 1 in Azerbaijan

At last - my first ever 'Caspian Caspian'. Day 1 of the trip was spent sorting out a hire car etc, but I found some time to look at some Caspian Gulls along the main sea promenade in Baku. A great moment, to see this species within the core of its range; here they should be far from the spectre of hybrid breeding with Herring and Yellow-legged Gulls.

Glaucous Gull, Peterhead

This 2 cy bird was present at Peterhead on Saturday, coming to bread at the Ugie estuary.

And a rather washed out Herring Gull - this bird has not commenced its complete moult and so all feathers are very worn and faded.

A dark-eyed Herring Gull.

First juv Yellow-legged Gulls of the year

Some juvenile michahellis from Sant Carles de la Rapita, Ebro Delta, Spain taken on 26 June.

This bird shows how fine-billed some juvs can be.

Eiders, Ythan Estuary, NE Scotland.

The head and bill profile varies considerably in Eider: this bird has a distinct roman nose

Yellow-legged and Audouin's Gulls, Spain, June 23

All these images were taken at Sant Carles de la Rapita, on the Ebro Delta, Catalunya, Spain. I waited for the fishing boats to come back from their day at sea - always a nice opportunity to take photos. The first set is of Audouin's Gulls.

Adult Yellow-legged Gull

Another adult Yellow-legged above; below is a selection of 2 cy Yellow-legged Gulls

Note that due to moult of some 1 gen feathers and replacement with white ones, the underwing looks rather pale on this bird.

Asymmetrical Yellow-legged Gull

I was looking through some old images yesterday and came across this bird from Spain (Ebro Delta, Catalonia) from 2006. The image above shows a very unusual pattern for YLG - no black on P5 combined with a wholly white tip to P10. It also has rather limited black on P6. So overall it appears to have lots of white and little black in the wing tip. However, as can be seen in the image below, it has a more normal pattern on P5 and 6 on the left wing. Of course asymmetrical primary patterns are not so unusual in large gulls, but the asymmetry tends to be subtle - this bird is rather extreme, with no black at all on P5 on one wing and a normal amount on the other.