Some Tours

AABirding is offering these fully accommodated tours (prices in Euros)  -

SOUTHERN FRANCE & NORTHERN SPAIN -
Bird Watching and Wine Tasting, a fun tour for the connoisseur of birds and wine.

Some Trip Reports

A PELAGIC AND PICNIC ON PETER THE GREAT BAY

        Vladivostok, the capital of Ussuriland in Far Eastern Russia, should be a thriving tourist destination. It is a bustling city of about 2 million people situated on an isthmus between the Amursky Gulf and the Ussurisky Gulf. The isthmus continues south as a chain of islands running into Peter the Great Bay. As a famous city in it's own right and as the gateway to vast areas of natural Russia, Vladivostok will one day evolve from it's present nascent tourism status to being a popular and exotic destination.
        In July 1998 I had the good fortune to be invited on a picnic cruise to Reyneke Island, the third large island in the chain, by a birding representative of a Seattle firm of chandlers to what is left of the Russian eastern fishing fleet. Firstly, Captain Alexander Alexeevich took our boat, KPX-9, around the harbour, the Bay of the Golden Horn, which was once the HQ for the five great eastern fleets of the USSR; the surface warship, submarine, merchant, fishing, and research fleets. This was during the 30 years that Vladivostok was closed to the world and the 2km long by 500m wide port must have been a grand sight with hundreds of these boats causing a frenzy of activity, coming and going. Today most of the boats remain but the frenzy has gone although the sight is still impressive but in quite a different way.
         Hundreds of boats of all sizes and shapes, warships and submarines, research and commercial boats, all tied bow-on to the shore and rusting away, line the banks of the harbour for two kms one way and about one km the other, side by side like giant rusty sardines in a giant can. Every now and again, Korean boats are tied alongside the larger vessels which the Korean crews are cutting up for scrap. The harbour is grossly polluted and lucky to have just a few Black-tailed Gulls. Impressive though it was, we were pleased to turn south through the heads into the clean waters along the eastern edge of the Amursky Gulf.
        A small rock island near the heads was home to several Japanese Cormorants Phalacrocorax capillatus,the common cormorant of the area, and few Rhinocerous Auklets Cerorhinca monocerata,many of the first and a few of the second flying to and from their feeding areas. The expected Pelagic Cormorant Phalacrocorus pelagicuswas not sighted all day. Among the numerous Black-tailed Gulls Larus crassirostristhere was one Eastern Herring Gull Larus cachinnans and suddenly popping out of the water, one Common Guillemot Uria alge.
        As we cruised south along the western edges of the small islands that form the eastern side of the Gulf, I stood beside the wheel-house door trying to tell to the captain in my very poor Russian that I was interested in what species of birds might be found here in summer. This is what a field guide is really for - one picture is worth a thousand words. He told me that all of the three species I had especially wanted to see were all breeding around the mouth of the River Amur and further north, at this time. They were Steller's Sea Eagle, Tufted Puffin, and Saunders Gull.
        Reyneke Island, mostly uninhabited, already had some small family groups picnicking on the beach. The bow of our fishing boat was grounded on the beach like the other small boats and we all walked down the steep gangplank onto the fine gravel. Swimming, cooking fish and eating it, and drinking vodka seemed to be the main picnicking activities. Bird-watching, or rather trying to find birds to watch, was only undertaken by two of us, even though we walked through the woods to the overgrown gun emplacement and bunker system on the little hill at the southern end of the island.
        Except for two Large-billed Crows Corvus macrorhyncusthere was only one of everything. One Hill Pigeon Columba rupestris,very similar to but larger than a Rock Pigeon Columba liviaand distinguished by it's white-banded tail, one Japanese Pygmy Woodpecker Dendrocopus kizuki,one Marsh Tit Parus palustris,one Eastern Great Tit Parus minor(the Russians have split majorinto major/minor with the Amur River as the boundary), one Eurasian Nuthatch Sitta europea, one Yellow-breasted Bunting Emberiza aureola,and one Long-tailed Rosefinch Uragus sibiricusheard only.
        On the way back a small group of Ancient Murrelet Synthliboramphus antiquusjust sat on the water as the boat crawled past on behalf of the visiting birders and one Spectacled Guillemot Copphus carbo surfaced nearby a little later much to my delight as it is endemic to NE Asia.
        Even though it was at least a month too late for my three other hoped-for species, it was a pleasant introduction to the eight-day tour of Primorsky Krai (the southern part of Far-eastern Russia) we were start on the next day.