Comment about tour Migrating birds of Volga delta

14-01-2009

author - Jon Hall

In October 2008 I flew on to Astrakhan and visited Cherny Zemly Biosphere park on the Kalmykia steppes to look for mammals, primarily Saiga. The Kalmykian Steppes don't see many tourists. Over the past 10 years fewer than 50 people a year on average have been to Cherny Zemly, and only 3 of them each year were from outside Russia. Most of these would have been researchers I reckon.

I organised the trip through the Russian Ecological Travel Center who were just fantastic. They speak perfect English, always replied quickly and helped make changes at the last minute to my plans. Trips to Cherny Zemly are not part of their standard set of tours so they had to arrange everything from scratch.

Astrakhan is a pleasant city on the river Volga. The Cherny Zemly reserve is a 3 hour drive from Astrakhan, the last 45 minutes of which are on a dirt track through the steppes.

I stayed in an old cottage that is the park HQ (though HQ is overdoing a bit I think). There was no running water and the generator came on for just 2 hours each evening. The park staff spoke no more than a handful of words of English. I was lucky because a researcher from Kalmykia Uni - Yonio - was staying. He spoke some English, though there was still plenty of space for confusion. Its a beautiful spot. The praries went on for ever, and the sunset and night skies were superb. We had great food.

Saiga were easy to see but hard to get close to. Saigas have had an interesting history in the 20th century. Virtually extinct in 1917 their numbers recovered so that in the 1980s there were millions on the Steppes. But selective hunting of the males - their horns are used in Chinese medicine - led to a huge gender imbalance and Saiga numbers have crashed. They are strange looking beasts and run like the clappers. Just about all the animals we saw - and we saw hundreds - charged off through the dust at 80kmh. They hold their heads low so their gait - like their looks - is odd.

They were of course easier to approach in the dark. But even then they wouldn't stay long in the spotlight before hooning off.

During a morning's Saiga spotting we saw a couple of Red Foxes, but no other mammals. Marbled Polecats, while not common, are a possibility.

A night's spotlighting was productive. Apart from numerous Saigas we saw several foxes, at least three of which were Corsac Foxes. But these - like the Saiga - were hard to get close to. We also saw several impressive Great Jerboas (Allactaga major).

It was difficult to be sure of which other species were present because of the language barriers. Sousliks (ground squirrels) are common in the summer but were hibernating already by early October. There were plenty of bats feeding around the park HQ and I guess they were living in the roof. Yonio seemed to think (or at least I think he did) that these were Kuhl's Pipistrelles but I don't know what he based his opinion on.

I set some elliot traps to see what was around - I think Social Voles were a possibility - but caught nothing other than a Long-eared Hedgehog (a species I had seen just once before).

If you what an authentic Russian experience and see some mammals in a top spot then Kalmykia is a place to go - unless you think you won't cope without a hot shower.