FAR WESTERN KAZAKHSTAN
Birding the limits of the Western Palearctic

Plan on arriving into Atyrau today and no birding activities are planned. We will have our first dinner together and time to look forward to what the next week will bring. Night in Atyrau

We will depart early on the drive into the west side of the Ural Delta with a packed lunch looking for a wide variety of species including Siberian Stonechat, Sykes’s Warbler, Long-tailed Shrike (rare) & Red-headed Bunting. Also we can see Dalmatian Pelican, Whooper Swan, White-headed Duck, Pallas’s Gull, Caspian Gull, Whiskered Tern, Blue-cheeked Bee-eater, Eurasian Hoopoe, European Roller, Red-backed & Lesser Grey Shrikes, Eastern Olivaceous Warbler, Eurasian Penduline Tit and others. In the distant past there were rare notes about Siberian Crane, so you never know what could turn up here! We will take picnic lunch along the road. Night will be spent in Atyrau.

We will start early in the morning and drive to Inderbor town where we will stay the night (about 250km) along Ural River from the west side. There we will make a few stops for birding and also we will take an unpaved road out into the vast steppe. We will be looking for White-winged Lark & Red-headed Bunting, as well as Demoiselle Cranes. We should see plenty of other birds of the Ural marshes and steppes including Turkestan Short-toed Lark, Black-bellied Sandgrouse, Pied Wheatear, Horned, Crested & Calandra Larks, Cetti's, Great Reed & Paddyfield Warblers, occasionally Booted Warbler, and possibly Black-headed Penduline-Tit along this road and by the end of today we may well have seen our first Black Larks - but better opportunities await us over the next few days.  Night in Inderbor (basic hotel).

All these days we will explore the areas for our important birds amongst the steppe and semi-desert. During these days we will also explore the salt lakes where we can see Ruddy Shelduck, Red-crested Pochard, Pygmy Cormorant, Glossy Ibis, Dalmatian Pelicans, many gulls including Pallas’s Gull, White-winged Tern, Eurasian Spoonbill, Great Egret, Purple Heron, real wild Mute Swans, Black-winged Pratincoles and others. For sure we will meet Black Larks and Isabelline Wheatears, and probably one or two Asian Desert Warblers and there are more good possibilities to see Demoiselle Cranes in few places. Again, and we will try for Red-headed Bunting and other buntings as well. Also, we will be watching different raptors of steppes including Black Kite, Long-legged Buzzard and Steppe & Eastern Imperial Eagle, Little Bustards and a variety of shrikes. Also big possibility to see wild Saiga Antelopes. 3 nights at a local hotel.

Early in the morning we will start our way back home through the vast steppe, making numerous stops along the way as we search for any species we still need. It's going to be a long but fascinating day's birding along this extreme edge of the Western Palearctic. Night in Atyrau.

In the morning, we will explore to the west of Atyrau, which will take us across the steppe along the foreshore of the Caspian Sea for species such as Dalmatian Pelican, Common Crane, Little Bittern, Western Marsh-Harrier, a variety of shorebirds including Red-necked Phalarope that could be present in large numbers, Caspian Gull, Citrine Wagtail, Sykes’s Warbler, Blyth's Reed Warbler, Black-headed Wagtail, Desert Wheatear, Bluethroat, Rose-coloured Starling, Common Rosefinch, Red-headed Bunting and others. This evening, we will have a farewell dinner before our departures tomorrow.

Flight back home or continue to Almaty & the Tien Shan Mountains and steppe for Pallas's Sandgrouse and more.