We got up at 5:30 in the morning, although the sun was already shining it still felt quite early for the Dutch friends, who were still jet-lagged. However once outside everybody was ready for a day birding in the wonderful Kanshengel desert. Beside the more common desert birds, the goal for the day was to find Macqueen's Bustard and Caspian plover. We started the day driving together to a place where we hoped to find Macqueen’s Bustard. With the sun and temperatures rising we had wonderful light and got out of the car on the top of a hill where we had a great view of our surroundings. We did see plenty of Greater Short-toed Larks, brown-necked ravens were flying by and the distance we saw a Montegu’s Harrier. Unfortunately no sign of Macqueen’s Bustards. After scanning the area for about 90 minutes we decided to head back to our base for breakfast. On the way back we did see sandgrouses near the well, it turned out to be 5 Pallas’s Sandgrouses, which let us approach pretty close [...... read more ]

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This trip report is about the birding/nature trip by Marnix ter Beek (loves nature in general), Rene Meek (loves big birds, snow leopard, and nature) and Albert Meek (birds, dragonflies, butterflies and nature in general) from The Netherlands, together with our Kazakh friends Madina Dyussebayeva (who organized the tip), Askar Isabekov and Vassiliy Fedorenko (best guides and friends we could wish during this trip). Albert’s wife is from Kazakhstan and has visited Kazakhstan many times before, had been birding with Askar and Madina before on few day trips .After arriving to Almaty in the middle of the night we were welcomed by Albert's in-laws where we had a short rest at their place. In the morning we did a Almaty city trip in less than 2 hours visiting the green Bazaar and Park Panfilov. After we prepared our luggage and camera's and went off to the agreed place to meet with our Kazakh friends. When we arrived our friends were already waiting and after some introductions we packed all [...... read more ]

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