Urban Birding. Warblers.

Since I didn’t go out of the city I decided go to the Republic Square to watch birds. Especially today is Sunday, it means there are not many cars on sidewalks. In addition now is the start of the season of the migration of the little birds.

I arrived to Square at 8am and saw that cars now banned parking on sidewalks! Now cars banned not only to park but to drive by sidewalks too! Fantastic! It means I can watch birds on my favourite Republic Square not only in weekend but in weekdays too. I don’t believe to this great news!

In a good mood I walked about three hours. I didn’t see any special one, all the birds are common to this season which I can named the “Time of the Little Brown Birds”. The most of birds I watched are members of Sylvidae family: Common and Lesser Whitethroats, Barred Warblers, Blyth’s Warblers and different Leaf Warblers. All of these little and plain birds mostly feed and stay into the bushes. To identify the bird in bush need to watch mostly to the style of moving than to the features of plumage of the bird. Today I watched all three species of Sylvia Warblers. Barred Warbler is the largest of three ones; out of bush it moves fast but into the bush it moves slowly, often doesn’t move a long time; it cracks more loudly than others and likes to chase the small relatives. Common Whitethroat is always fussy, always in motion, often is feeding on the ground. Lesser Whitethroat prefers to be in the top branches of the trees, therefore it is often visible. Unlike Warblers the Stonechats and Shrikes like to posture, they like often and long perching on the tops or top branches of the fir-trees or bushes. Spotted Flycatcher likes perching in public but prefers the bottom branches of trees.

In my opinion the season of end of August – beginning of September is the best time to watching of birds. Birds will be a lot and they will changed almost every day. All you need is binocular and camera.

1. Common Whitethroat | Sylvia communis

2. Barred Warbler | Sylvia nisoria

3. Lesser Whitethroat

4.

5. Turkestan Shrike | Lanius phoenicuroides

6. Spotted Flycatcher

7. Cars banned to drive on sidewalks