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Today I found the tracks on snow in the park. First the illegible tracks of someone with short legs, then they disappeared and then the tracks of wings - three tracks, each next is less clear than previous.My guess: recent years in this place the different small rodents and insectivorous inhabited: moles, shrews, may be voles. I think some of its came out on the snow and was captured by Sparrowhawk. I think by Sparrowhawk, due to the small wingspan - about 45 cm.I confused by the large size of tracks for underground inhabitants. Size is more suitable for Squirrel. But Squirrel can not come out of nowhere, but the tracks suddenly appeared and just as suddenly disappeared. [...... read more ]

Sunday was surprisingly cold and snowy. But I and Oleg Belyalov anyway went to Sorbulak. Firstly we visited Little Sorbulak. On the road over Karaoi village we noticed birds were feeding on the hay putting on snow. Most of birds were Corn Buntings and Feral Pigeons, but also Crested larks, one Black-throated Thrush, Mynas, Collared Doves were there; nearby we saw Grey-headed Goldfinches too. The next spot is dump of Sorbulak. Due to frost the road to dump was more or less good, but some times we rounded the water by the snowy steppe. In the dump as we expected we saw much of Corvids, Rock Doves, and several tens of White-tailed Sea-Eagles. Among the latters we noticed two Steppe Eagles too. Two closest to mouth of channel bays of the first reservoir of Little Sorbulak are open. But the rest of reservoir is still ice-covered. But in open water we saw Swans (both Mute and Whooper) and Ducks (Mallards, Pintails, Common Pochards, Gosadners). On the road to gateway we saw three Fieldfares and [...... read more ]

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