The Whispering Land

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Hustai National Park is about 100km outside Mongolia's capital Ulan Baatar. There are, of course, tours that go out there but I like to do things by myself because it's more fun and cheaper. I had started by emailing the Hustai National Park Trust to see if I could book a ger (a Mongolian tent, called a yurt by Russians). I also knew they had a staff mini-van that went to the park and back every Sunday and Friday, in which tourists could ride. The van costs US$30 return which is not cheap, especially considering the van is going there anyway, but still cheaper than a tour. A ger cost US$69 per day including three meals. I was going to take my own food so the price of the ger was instead US$31 per day. Oddly enough that price does include breakfast, which means you're paying an extra US$38 per day just for lunch and dinner!! I was staying five nights which meant my bill (transport, ger and park entry) came to US$192 plus about NZ$57 on food bought at the supermarket beforehand. If I had taken the three meals a day option it would have been US$375, so a pretty hefty saving.

The van leaves Ulan Baatar from outside the trust's office. The address is on the website I had been told. In fact there's a map on there about the size of a postage stamp. Not much help. Fortunately I had already come across a random guy's blog about going to Hustai in the trust's mini-van and he had included some directions for getting there. This is the same reason I tend to include various seemingly unimportant details – just in case someone random is looking for that exact information and finds it in my blogs. So, for anyone like that, you use the intersection of Peace Avenue and Zanabazar Street as your starting point of reference (Peace Avenue is the main street of the central city, and Zanabazar Street is the one that leads up to the Gandan Monastery; fortuitously my guesthouse was just next to the monastery so I was already at the start point!). Head west along Peace Avenue, on the right side of the road, cross the next big intersection and keep walking until you find building number 31. It is between 10 and 15 minutes from the Zanabazar intersection, depending on how much stuff you are carrying. Turn right at building 31 and walk up the alley and follow the little arrow signs labelled Hustai National Park Trust which are on the walls (go right, left, right, and you're at their office). I had been told in the email that the van left at 6pm, but in that guy's blog he said 5pm, so I arrived at 4.30pm just in case. The van was indeed scheduled to leave at 5pm so lucky for me! Actually it left the office at 5.30pm (engine trouble) then stopped at a supermarket until 6.30pm. We got out to the park at about 8pm, just after dark.

If you're not familiar with gers, they are big round tents made of cloth and animal skins on a wooden framework, originally designed for the nomadic lifestyle of the Mongolian tribes, easy to erect and take down. Now gers tend to be permanent, on concrete bases. The ones at Hustai are about twelve foot across and inside have three beds, a table and some stools, and an enclosed fire-stove for heat. I had heard a lot about how freezing cold Mongolia is, even in summer, but it's not that bad really. The temperature does drop considerably at night but not enough that I needed the fire. I just used a couple of extra blankets at night instead, mostly because burning wood to keep tourists warm doesn't seem terribly ecologically-friendly in a treeless landscape! The temperature during the day was what I would describe as “mildly chilly” – not too cold but not too warm. The air temperature itself was chilly so when the sun was out it felt warm but if clouds passed over then it dropped immediately. The main problem was the wind, which was rather bracing to say the least! If it wasn't windy and the sun was out then just a t-shirt would suffice; if not windy but the sun was covered by cloud then two layers of clothes (say, a t-shirt and a sweatshirt) was needed; but if the wind was blowing then a third layer had to be added – and it was windy most of the time. Half the time I was wearing gloves as well. I loved it! The wind was one of those that makes a howly-whistling sort of noise, and if you were facing in just the right direction it sounded as if you were surrounded by people whispering.

Hustai is mainly hilly steppe country: hills and grass and that's all. I like forest but there's something appealing about being in the middle of an endless nothing. Everywhere you look you can see for miles and it is all exactly the same. The details are different of course, when you look closer. The hills look like they are covered in thick grassland, but actually the ground is gravelly sand, poor in nutrients, and the grass is sparse and interwoven with low-growing herbs and succulents. There are all sorts of interesting invertebrates here, with grasshoppers being particularly prevalent. There's one about the size of a sturdily-built locust which is dark brown and well-camouflaged, but when it takes flight the rear wings are bright lipstick-pink: it shoots up into the air in a pink flurry but as soon as it lands and closes up its wings it seemingly vanishes. Another calls while hovering in mid-air like a skylark, sounding like it's blowing raspberries (the noise is made by the sound of its wings). There's one I never saw but it calls from down in the grass and sounds like a tin of sand being violently shaken. And then there's a huge wingless one almost the size of a small mouse. How that survives here alongside foxes, badgers and hedgehogs I have no idea!

Birding turned out to be difficult here. The big birds are visible enough – including a flock of about forty demoiselle cranes on my first day – but the little birds not so much. Because there are almost no trees the birds are usually on the ground. It can be surprising to come round a bend and find a golden eagle just sitting on the grass! Sometimes the little birds perch on the powerlines: you can see them from a kilometre away but by the time you've walked near enough to try and ID them they've moved another kilometre away. Most of the time though the little birds are on the ground in the grass. You only see them when they flush and then they just disappear into the grass again before you get a chance to see what they were. So I didn't get a lot of little birds on my list, and of those I did see only one was a species I hadn't already seen this trip. The other problem is the China field guide. The pictures are rubbish! I spent ages staring at a little bird on a wire and flicking through the book getting nowhere. I know I'm going to have a lot of birds left unidentified while using that book.

Lots of birds of prey here. Pity I mostly can't tell one from another! Black kites gather round the ger camp every morning. Amur falcons decorate the powerlines, with the occasional common kestrel in between. Golden eagles are common. I saw some cinereous vultures too – they are enormous!! The first two I saw sitting on a distant hillside I thought at first were a couple of deer! I know that sounds pretty stupid but because the landscape is so open it can be tricky telling how close or far anything is. The next morning I saw one soaring over the hills and it looked like someone was using a barn door for a kite.

Birds are all well and good, but it was actually mammals I was at Hustai for. After the disappointments of Russia it was good to finally start adding to the mammal list! It wasn't really any easier finding the mammals than the birds. The open country means the animals see you long before you see them, so the main way to find them is to stop every minute or two and scan the surrounding hills with your binoculars. Almost all the mammals I saw were spotted like this and hardly anything was seen at close quarters. Even the first couple of times I saw Przewalski's horses it was only through scanning, and horses aren't exactly small! The horses turned out to be easy to find, with one or two dozen seen every day. Siberian marmots and long-tailed ground squirrels were very common, but always at a distance – fine with binoculars but hopeless for photos. They are extremely wary, which I guess is understandable in a countryside filled with hungry predators.

As usual I was on foot. There is the option of being driven around in the park but the rate is US$1 per kilometre so by the time I'd have got anywhere that I couldn't have walked myself the bill would have been more than I cared to pay. The Tuul River runs through the south of the park and apparently that area is best for birds (lots of trees and water) but it probably would have cost me over $100 to be driven there and back, plus I was mainly after open-country mammals so I stayed on foot. On the first day I just walked and got my bearings. Not a lot was seen, but golden eagle, common kestrel, cinereous vulture and demoiselle crane were all new (as well as all being fantastic birds). Mammals for the day were the horses, marmots and ground squirrels already mentioned. It felt pretty neat being able to write “Przewalski's horse” in my notebook, given that they used to be extinct in the wild. Seeing them living wild is really satisfying. I'd been a bit worried that it would be just like looking at domestic horses in a field but it wasn't at all. In fact they look nothing like feral domestics because all the individuals are the same shape and colour, they are far more stocky and solid than domestics, and the stiff upright mane gives them a completely different character. They just look “right”, out there on the steppes where they belong. It takes your mind back to how the Pleistocene may have looked before humans messed it all up, and you can just imagine some steppe bison and saiga antelope joining them on the hillsides. I was going to do some spot-lighting as well but by the time I'd waited till it got dark I felt more like going to sleep so I did that instead.

Whenever I’m planning trips I usually start with a germ of an idea, something along the lines of “hey that’s a cool animal, I want to see that.” And then I start reading and other stuff gets added in, and then it sort of joins up with an entirely different trip-plan to make a longer one, and before you know it the snowball effect turns it into a great gallimaufry of travel. The impetus for this trip was a cat. Not just any old cat but the Pallas’ cat, which basically looks like a really angry Persian cat. At some point in 2010 a comment was made (either by me or to me, I can’t remember exactly) to the effect of “you don’t want to be one of those people who gets to forty and has never seen a Pallas’ cat in the wild”...and that’s why I’m in Mongolia now. Seeing one would be a total long-shot but like I always say, it's better to try to see one and fail than to not bother trying at all. Even a small chance is still a chance.

The hills of Hustai are dotted with bizarre piles of rocks which look like some kid has been balling up plasticine and clumping the bits together. And not little piles of rocks up to your waist, but enormous jumbles the size of houses with individual rocks the size of cars and trucks. It is in these that the Pallas' cats spend their luxury time when not hunting. I checked out a lot of these piles in an area about an hour and a half walk from the camp, clambering over and around them looking in all the nooks and crannies but without result. The ever-present wind has over the years worn deep into the rock, gnawing out labyrinths in which a dozen cats could probably hide unseen. Several times I would go over a pile as best I could, and later see a marmot sitting outside one of the very holes I'd checked. I did find several cavities with cat faeces and marmot bones inside, and one jumble in particular had what was obviously a long-used toilet site on top, but all the faeces were dry so the cat hadn't been there for a while. However I spent quite some time staking out this area just in case. I've read that Pallas' cats are strictly nocturnal; I've read that Pallas' cats are crepuscular (active at dusk and dawn); and I know people have seen them by day and I've seen footage of them hunting during the day. I reckon they are just active whenever they feel like it, so it's worth looking whatever the time of day.

My second day at the park was a good mammal day (although distinctly lacking in Pallas' cats!). Siberian marmots, long-tailed ground squirrels and Przewalski's horses started the day off, and then as I was nearing what I came to call “the Cat Rocks” a flock of Daurian partridges flew up fom a nearby hillside, calling out in panic. They quickly disappeared into the scrub upon landing, and a couple of marmots stood up on their hindquarters and started giving alarm calls. There was obviously a predator about, perhaps even one of a small feline nature. I swung my binoculars in the direction the marmots were facing and spied a red fox trotting out into the open, acting all like Mr. Cool now that he knew the marmots had spotted him. He stopped to look at me, then vanished into a ravine. I spent some time scanning the area around the Cat Rocks, then headed on further up into the hills. There was a patch of birch forest up there (although calling it “forest” is like calling a balding man “hirsute”). Still, I found three female black grouse in there (and no other birds at all!). Leaving the trees I stopped to scan the hillsides and was surprised to see some deer sitting amongst the rocks near the top. Looking more closely there were actually about seven of them but they blended in so well to the background that I could easily have missed them. These were Mongolian red deer or maral, and they look like no other red deer or wapiti I've seen (on New Zealand deer farms, which is the only place I've seen them). The main body colour is a sort of bluish-silver, almost like a pale nilgai, and the rump is bright rufous. All the animals at Hustai are very nervous of people, and these deer were no exception. Even though I was a fair distance away, upon realising they had been spotted they all stood up, giving alarm calls, and most of them slunk off while a couple kept guard on my movements. I made my sneaky way through some more trees until I was higher up the hill, and looking over the top I saw there was a whole herd of maybe thirty deer over there. I got some photos (from a distance, so not very good) but eventually the herd moved off over the top of the next hill. Back at the Cat Rocks again I was happy to see a lesser spotted woodpecker working its way through the berry-laden bushes on the hill, and a pair of red-billed choughs turned up to check out the rocks with me. Choughs are great birds. Their scientific name is Pyrrhocorax which means “fire-crow” for their bright red bill and legs. Their calls are really neat but I can imagine it would get a bit annoying if they lived in your garden because they're quite piercing!

I returned to the ger camp to eat some food and collect my torch, and then headed back to the Cat Rocks for a dusk watch. (Lots of long walks on this trip!!). No cats emerged, but a Tolai hare did. As dusk fell, at the point where it is just too dark to see very well but still too light for nocturnal animals to be out, the deer started bugling in the hills behind me. Once darkness had fallen completely the wolves started up. Now that was seriously cool. I've never been anywhere with wolves before, and to be walking along the road with a wolf pack howling around me in the darkness was magic. Not much was seen on the walk back to camp, just another hare and two Mongolian five-toed jerboas. Jerboas are rodents that hop like kangaroos. Most species are tiny, like mice or rats, but the five-toed jerboas are big hefty beasts in comparison. So not counting the wolves (because I didn't see them), today was a seven mammal day and it's been a long time since I had anything like that.

No new birds were seen over the next two days because I was concentrating more on scanning rock piles and hillsides for cats, but I did come across a scheltopusik shooting across the track which was exciting. I didn't realise they would be as fast as they are. The second spot-lighting session I did was interesting. Halfway back to camp I picked up some red eye-shine on a hillside. It looked like one big eye and I thought it must be a horse. It was outside the good limit of the torch-light so I couldn't see the body behind it through the binoculars, but as I moved closer it became apparent that rather than one big eye it was actually two smaller forward-facing eyes, i.e. the eyes of a small predator. It headed up the hill away from me, regularly stopping to look back at me but always just beyond torch range, and from the way it moved it was obviously something low to the ground. Too big to be a mustelid like a polecat but too small to be a lynx or wolf and it had the wrong movement to be a badger. I was going through the Hustai mammal list in my head trying to think what else it could be and could only come up with Pallas' cat. As I got to the bottom of the hill the animal disappeared over the top. I gave the surrounding area a quick sweep and picked up a pair of green eyes off to the right amongst some sedges. That animal vanished before I got anywhere near close to it, but I picked up the first animal again heading up the next hillside. I trailed it over the hills for about twenty minutes, a bit concerned that it appeared to be moving faster than a Pallas' cat should, but not sure what else it would be. Finally I got juuuuuust close enough to be able to vaguely discern the body outline. It was a fox. However the eye-shine of the second animal I'd seen, the one that had disappeared quickly, had been green. I don't know what colour the eye-shine of a Pallas' cat is, but I'd be willing to bet it's green. So maybe I did see one after all........

(I have since been told that Pallas' cats do indeed have green eye-shine, so I am now confident that the animal was a Pallas' cat!! But I can't count it as "seen" because it was only the eyes. That's the frustrating thing about spot-lighting in such open country, the animal is still a fair distance away when you pick up the eye-shine so you can't actually see it, whereas in forest the animal is usually pretty close because you can't see as far anyway.)

Now I'm back in Ulan Baatar, and tomorrow I'll be trying to sort out how to get to another national park where Pallas' cats are found. I'll see how that goes.

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Photos

Have you seen this cat?
I found this picture on the internet and it was too good to not add to the blog!

scenery
the so-called forest at the right...

one of the giant flightless crickets
(yes, they bite!)

Comments

[nic]

coooooool
Yay for almost seeing a cat :) Have you ridden a horse? Or been wrestling in a funny hat? If you have time at the end of our trip you should fly from Tokyo to Hawaii. there's heaps of birds, at the national parks they even give you bird spotting guides....sadly I spilt juice on mine within about 30 seconds so I can only say I saw a red one and a yellow one. And a Nene, they're an endangered goose. As an added bonus, the birds are so used to loud Americans they didn't even care that I'm noisey.

[Scary Israel]

are horses for riding? I thought they were for eating? When you say you saw a red bird and a yellow bird, was that because the juice you spilt was tomato and orange juice? How big was the yellow one because Big Bird is yellow.