Day 10 - Back to Dalanzadgad and Yolun Am

We got up and had a wander along the gorge before breakfast at 8.00.am. There were the usual Lammegeirs, vultures and Black Kites plus a Daurian Shrike. We then returned for breakfast while the crew packed up camp and loaded the cars for our drive back to Dalanzadgad.

We stopped off at Tumens house, swapped cars and then headed out for Yoland Am. A fuel stop on the way out had no diesel so we wandered along the road opposite the farm area we'd visited on the first morning looking at Amur Wagtails while the car went to another station, filled up and returned for us.

We were stopped on the way out by a police check point who were giving severe weather warnings about possible heavy rain.
Yolanda Am was very busy and we had to park in the overflow area. Brenda and i were offered a horse ride up the gorge which we accepted. We mounted a couple of the ponies and were led along the valley. It was a great way to go but it meant that we couldn’t stop or photograph anything. The others walked up, seeing voles and picas and a Wallcreeper. This was the only place that we saw Clematis tangatica.

At the end of the valley there were snowfinches flitting about and a small vole scuttling around a stone heap. Tumen called us up a shale incline to see the Lammegeier nest site with several birds sitting around on the ledges. While up there another Wallcreeper was found searching along the rocks on the other side of the valley, it took me a while as it was smaller than I expected but I saw it eventually and was able to watch this lovely bird as it foraged among the cracks.

We rode back, keeping an eye out for small rodents and then spent some time looking at the artisan models before buying some handmade Ibex as mementoes.

In the bottom of the bag was a knuckle bone which is supposed to bring good luck. We found the cars nearer the entrance and as it had started raining we sat in one of the cars until the others arrived. We then drove back to the hotel in Dalanzadgad for dinner. 

Day 9 - Back to Base Camp

We set the alarms for 4.15 and made our way back up to the shelters by about 5.00am. We scanned until about 8.30, seeing some great Ibex activity, a few horses and around 13 Hill Pigeons coming to the pool to drink. From the shelter we saw Pied Wheatear, Lammergeier, Godlewski’s Buntings  and a Rock Thrush. We walked back down to the tents and then on down to Base Camp 2 for breakfast. The cars were then loaded up with all our gear, including the food tent and we returned to Base Camp. On the way we saw a good selection of birds including Pallas’ Sandgrouse, Isaballine and Desert Wheatears and Asian Short-toed Larks. We drove through another area for Henderson’s Ground Jay and were lucky enough to get reasonable views of a pair as they foraged around the base of a bush. We also came across a Desert Warbler flitting around a bush.

We visited a spring with a marshy pond and small stream running down the valley. The provision of water meant there was grass growing along the stream, with an unexpected Little Ringed Plover, and a small wooded area with a fence. We found at least four sp of dragonfly on the marshy pool, including a Blue Skimmer, Globe Skimmer, a Sympetrum and a blue tail, but just Daurian Shrike among the trees.

Chris saw a Tolai Hare but it disappeared round the fence before we could catch up.
We stopped in a lovely gorge called Khavtsgaet for lunch. As we drove in a family of Chuker Partridges scrambled up the rocks, the chicks were only a few days old but still managed to scramble up the rocks.  The cars dropped us off part way along and we walked along the valley. There was a shallow stream meandering along the floor and so there was plenty of grass for the herd of ponies and a flock of about 20 Mongolian Finches which flitted along the valley rocks.

After lunch we drove back through some stunning scenery where the roads were often river beds and one place was yet another valley full of small rodents, mainly Picas, and some of the narrowest, single tacks through the valley ever. In one valley there was a juvenile Cinerous Vulture sitting in a nest looking down at us and some nice flowers dotted about. It was a real pleasure to come back to some familiar views as we arrived back at camp.

We had another lovely dinner before setting off for a spotlighting session round the valleys. Our first highlight was finding a Pallas' Cat which eventually shot down the hillside and headed off up the valley. We then walked the long valley and found some Young Eagle Owls at the top of the rocks. Spotlighting further up and two torches caught an adult in their lights, the torches caused the Owl to drop it's prey and then it landed heavily in some greenery at the side of the valley.
The prey turned out to be a baby Pallas' cat minus it's head. The lights were taken off the owl and it flew off into the night to resume it's hunting.

Day 8 - Second mountain camp

An early morning walk round the camp with Tree Sparrows and Desert Wheatear before an 8.00 o’clock breakfast in the restaurant with cereal, orange slices, cakes, pancakes, fried eggs and bacon and tea and coffee as well as different kinds of bread with Jam, honey, and condensed milk.
We packed up and then drove out to the Saxaul Forest area where we soon found Saxaul Sparrows nesting in some crumbling walls. One of the more striking sparrows.

We then drove through the Steppes, stopping for a single-file walk towards a Wild Ass. These Wild Asses are a different sub-species from the ones we saw in Gujerat but looked quite similar. We were approaching carefully when a camel walked the other way, crashing the photos. Across the stony ground were lots of Toad-headed Agama sps and various cryptically coloured crickets.

We drove through the dunes back to Camp 2 for lunch. On the way we stopped at a Henderson Ground Jay hotspot where we walked about but only saw a Steppe Grey Shrike until we were driving off when a pair were spotted in the distance, we drove round to get closer but they moved quickly over the ridge and disappeared.

We arrived back at Base Camp 2 for lunch and then our gear was taken up to the new rock shelter areas where the tents had been set up. Leaving our un-needed gear there we walked up to the new shelter around 4.00pm. The walk up was a great deal less steep and these shelters had more room, were less angled and with bigger holes to peer through, although there still wasn’t a lot of leg room to stretch out. We spent the afternoon and evening scanning and checking the skyline and mountainsides, watching Ravens, Ibex and Crag Martins until around 9.00pm before we walked carefully back to the tents for the night.

Day 7 - Mountain Shelters and Tourist Ger Camp

We were up at 4.30 and moved as quietly as we could back to the shelters. We stayed on the mountain until about 10.00 with breakfast of hard boiled eggs, fruit chips and chocolate biscuits being brought up from Oyunna in Base Camp two. There wasn’t much about but a few Hill Pigeons flew in for a drink to the pool and a couple of Pied Wheaters and Godlewski’s Buntings flew through the rocks. There were a few Ibex dotted around the hillsides. We were offered the chance of spending another night here but the collective decision was that once was enough. I did suggest that they looked for an alternative site that was lower and easier which they then proceeded to do.
Checking the valley opposite the crew found a better site and spent the next couple of hours building two more rock shelters which were much easier to access.
We were called in for our second breakfast of fried eggs and sausages. We spent the rest of the time looking for the Godlewski’s Bunting, Pied Wheatear and anything else that was around the base tent. The tent was home to some amazing centipedes which seemed to live in the window squares of the tent.

The decision was taken to drive to a Tourist Ger Camp for the night, leaving the area to settle after all the activity and maybe encouraging the cat to return. We were called in for lunch of Tuna salad, a bowl of vegetable and sweet corn and then we walked to the edge of the valley before being collected and driven through the valleys and sand dunes to the Buren Camp, leaving the food tent and the cooking gear all zipped up in the valley.
The driving was spectacular travelling through steppes, dry river valleys and sand dunes. On the way there were a couple of sightings of Black-tailed Gazelle which we didn’t really see because we were in the last car and Red-cheeked Ground Squirrel, which we eventually got good views of.

A few sparse bushes held an Asian Desert Warbler and one site we stopped at also had a Steppe Grey Shrike.

On the drive through the valleys we saw a Rock Thrush and we had an exciting drive through the Khongor Dunes before joining the tracks which led to the Buren tourist camp. This was an official tourist camp with en-suite Gers and a restaurant. We settled in, had a quick look round, a shower and then met up at 8.00 for dinner of meat strips, noodles and vegetables. We took a little time to record some of the bats that were flying over the camp which we will send to the Ulaanbaatar University for identification. We then set off on a night drive. Our first sighting was of a flock of Pallas’ Sandgrouse most of which flew off but a youngster stayed and allowed us to photograph it before it flew off to join the others. Further sightings were of more sandgrouse, Five-toed Pygmy Jerboa, Hairy-footed Jerboa and Siberian Jerboa before we returned to the camp.

As we were turning in, Tumen called out that he had a Long-eared Hedgehog so we all walked over to the wall where the hedgehog was before letting it go about its nightly activities. As we turned in another one was found in another part of the camp.

Day 6 - Move south

Because of Tumen’s news it was decided to move to the Zuluun (Sevrei) Hill’s via Dalanzadgad. We were told to pack the minimum for three nights without showers etc so travel light. We loaded up, drove back to Tumen’s house where we had a short walk to the marshy area with Paddyfield Warbler in the reeds, Little Tern, Common and Wood Sandpipers over the lake and White-cheeked Starling, Amur Wagtails, Little Ringed Plovers, Daurian Shrike, Pacific Swifts overhead and the Pond Heron briefly flew away in the distance, before being called back and setting off for the Zuulun Hills.
We drove south, stopping for lunch at a cafe in Bayundalai where I had traditional mongolian dumplings and a bottle of Coca Cola, We arrived at the ‘cat’ mountain where the crew disembarked our gear and headed up the ‘70’ mt. hillside. I managed to climb it but it was quite difficult underfoot, with the problems of my breathing. The views were absolutely spectacular, whichever way you looked.

The crew were moving rocks about creating a shelter which turned out to be a rock wall with holes in it. The floor was stony and uncomfortable and there wasn’t a lot of room so we ended up peering over the top.

We had sleeping bags with us for the night and these made a reasonable sitting cushion but the angle meant that we spent a lot of our time moving around trying to get stable.

Chris went for a chat with Tumen and we sat watching what we thought was a huge dust storm moving along the other side of the mountains and increasingly dark clouds building up over us.

We made the decision to move off the hillside as the first rain drops fell. It was quite frightening as it was getting dark, wet and the ground was very stony. Martin had a tumble just in front of me but was Ok and everyone else managed it without getting hurt. Our amazing crew wrestled with the tents in the rain and high wind, getting them set up in time for us to dive inside without getting too wet. It actually turned out to be a fairly comfortable night for me but the others struggled with the stony ground.

Day 5 - Any signs of Cat?

We had a later breakfast of pancakes and sausages and then went out to check the traps. Several had been entered but none had triggered, probably needing adjustment to the mechanism to make them more sensitive. We drove to a new area through the valleys, meeting up with a nomad on a bike who took us to a valley with lots of ‘Boomba’ around the narrow stream bed. On the way back he caught a Mongolian Silver Vole which he picked up to show us. We then headed out onto a plateau overlooking the steppes in the distance. It seemed that we had taken the wrong route as the nomad turned up on his bike and the crew held a long conflab sitting cross legged on the ground.

We saw Lammegeiers and a Golden Eagle before returning for lunch and to wait for Tumen’s return. His news was that he had seen a snow leopard that morning, coming down to a pool to drink. The decision was taken to move camp tomorrow for three days in the south. This would also give us the chance of Long-eared Hedgehog, Wild Ass and Henderson’s Ground Jay.
We drove to a ravine which was very green with lots of flowers. There were Beautiful Rosefinches calling from a bush just up the rocks and an Eagle Owl was seen on the tops and flying across the ravine. It was found again on the way out but I was ahead with Tumen doing some botanising so I didn’t see it. An eastern Whitethroat was feeding young. Along the valley floor there was a plant that looked like, and turned out to be, Wild Rhubarb. There was also a clump of blue larkspur sp, at least three different allium sp among many other plants.

We returned to Base camp for dinner and to pack up basic things for a 3 day visit to the south.