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Published: August 6th 2007
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Lapwing
Photo by Karen Aghababyan on our birding trip to the Armash Fish Ponds in the Ararat Valley Hi all, I thought that this blog should be about the Armenian landscape. Armenia is just a tiny place, about the size of Belgium or Maryland, according to the guidebook Armenia and Karabagh, written by Matthew Karanian and Robert Kurkjian. But it is an incredibly mountainous place so that, like Nevada, the basin and range topography is a bit misleading. It takes a 6 hours of steady driving up and down the mountains to reach the border with Iran, for example. From Yerevan the big and small peaks of Mt. Ararat are in view, but they are actually in modern Turkey. The tallest peaks in Armenia are part of the Mt. Aragats massif (13,435 ft.). Only about 8% of the countryside is forested or planted with woodland trees—during Soviet times many pine groves and other areas of shrubs and woodlands were planted to prevent further erosion. Some of this was lost after perestroika as Armenians, left without anyone to run the nuclear power station, had to use firewood for heat during fairly brutal winters.
Unfortunately also, Armenia has been grazed and cultivated for a very long time - I think the land gives new and sharper meaning to the word
Student Birders
Birders getting started at the Yerevan State Univesity field station "overgrazed" as some of the pictures will show.
Summer weather While Yerevan is very hot in August, the surrounding mountain areas are quite pleasantly cool and rains are frequent. For example, today Alexander (a butterfly expert from Moscow) and I tried to go by truck and then on foot to a high peak not far from Yerevan. But the rains of the last two days made the two-track roads slippery enough to prevent us from getting to our destination. And rains looked threatening again today. We hiked anyway but were contantly on the lookout for the dogs of the shepherds which are very hungry and terribly mean. During Soviet times much of the herding was restricted to areas around collectives, but now the herders have summer tent camps throughout the mountains. They tend mixed herds of sheep, goats, and cows.
The ECRC
The American University of Armenia’s Environmental Research and Conservation Center focuses, for now anyway, on bird ecology and conservation education. Many of the photos that I will include are from trips with students and/or adult groups who want to learn about the Birds of Armenia. It is truly a wonderful area to see birds because Blue butterfly
Each mountain range has its own species of these it is a major flyway between the Caspian and Black Seas as birds migrate from Africa to their summer breeding places here and farther north. We also teach Environmental Science classes to students in the graduate programs at the university. For example, I will be teaching Environmental Science and Conservation this fall, my colleague will teach a Bird Ecology class, and another part-time faculty person will offer an Environmental Policy class. Each quarter we offer three different Environmental classes so that Master’s degree students in the other Centers—e.g. Law, Policy, Computer Science, Industrial Ecology, English—will have at least one Environmental Science Class. This is a stipulation by Mr. Sarkis Acopian, a major sponsor of the American University and of the Environmental Research and Conservation Center. Hopefully, we will start a Master’s program in Environmental Science within the next year or so.
Photos
Enjoy the photos and then be prepared for a bit of the reality of the environmental issues here in future blogs.
For the birders in the group I am including the results of one day trip to watch birds: it was a wonderful day where we saw the sunset on the habitat of the Caspian Snowcock Black headed bunting
Taken by Karen Aghababyan on one of our field trips to the mountains which we had hoped to see—next time.
Armash Fish-farming ponds:
Squacco Heron
White Stork
Black-Winged Stilt
Lesser Kestrel
Cattle Egret
Green Sandpiper
Common Sandpiper
Night Heron
Little Tern
Glossy Ibis
Common Pochard (w/ ducklings)
Hoopoe
Purple Heron
Little Bittern
Pygmy Cormorant
Great Crested Grebe
Olivaceous Warbler feeding 2 fledglings
Long-eared Owl chased by Lesser Grey Shrike
Lesser Grey Shrike
White-Winged Tern
Whiskered Tern
Red-crested Pochard
Great Reed Warbler
White-Tailed Lapwing (3, in total)
Caspian Warbler (cur off from European Reed-warbler)
Bearded Reedling
Ferruginous Pochard
Western Marsh Harrier
Persian (blue-cheeked) Bee-eater
Sand Martin
Kentish Plover
Collared Pratincole
Savi's warbler
Hobby
Little grebe
Roller
Menetries's Warbler
Rufous-tailed Scrub-robin
Jackdaw
Gull-billed tern
Zangakatun village:
Crested lark
Lammergeyer
Long-legged Buzzard
Rose-colored Starlings
Isabelline Wheatear
Wood Pigeon
Turtle Dove
Corn Bunting
Chukar
Black-headed Bunting
Gndasar mountain:
Tawny Pipit
Red-fronted Serin
Twite
Linnet
Rock Sparrow
Northern Wheatear
Sparrowhawk
Grey Partridge
Woodlark
Skylark
White Wagtail
Whinchat
Lanner falcon
Little owls (nestlings in cave in cliff face)
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Eleanor
non-member comment
Citizen's sensitivity to ecology
Jenny: Thanks so much for the blog and the pictures from your birding trip. Are many of the people of Armenia sensitive to ecological issues such as overgrazing and deforestation? Or are they so consumed with making their way each day, that recycling, planting trees, crop and grazing rotation aren't possible to consider now? Who's running the nuclear plant today? Do Armenian's have enough power to negate the necessity of cutting trees to stay warm in the winter? Thanks for keeping in touch, Eleanor