Setting off to Koni

July, 22. Foggy morning on the Ola lagoon. We loaded our boat and fuel to the large boat owned by the Magadan Reserve and went across the Tauy bay to the Ploskoy ranger's station. The crossing was boring and un-eventfull, but upon arrival we were greeted by the local welcoming committee which was represented by 4 bears. Usually this place has one to two bears living close to the station, however this year it was rather unusually high numbers.

After unloading and setting for a night I managed to get few shot of the bears.

The surveys started

 On July 21 the weather started to clear up, and, accompanied by the gull specialist, Dr. Larisa Zelenskaya  I went around the Staritskogo peninsula. The peninsula is a rocky terrain in-between two bays of the city of Magadan: the Gertnera Bay and the Nagaevo Bay. Traditionally there were 5-6 pairs in the territory. This year there were 6 productive nests totaled 11 chicks: the overall record for this portion of the surveys. All but one nests had 2 chicks.

The view to the nests is summarized in the video.

The map of this day trip based on my tracker is below:

The season onf 2019 is on!

Town of Magadan has welcomed me by a long and soaking wet cyclone. Upon arrival I was town-bond for 3 long days. The visibility was close to 100 m horizontally, and hardly 30 m vertically. Boring time, really. The photo below is the view to the sea you cannot see...

July, 24. The Tauy River

July, 24. The Tauy River

Early morning of the July, 24 we set off for the Kava-Chelomdja portion of the Reserve. At 9am we were at the Talon village, loading out boat. This summer I decided to name the aluminum boat, which was presented to us by the prominent ornithologists who studied waterfowl in the area. His name is Arseniy Krechmar, and, naturally, the boat was named "A.V. Krechmar".

We were planning to survey the Tauy river between the Talon and Balagannoe village, and then to go upstream to the Magadan State Nature Reserve.  The day was busy, as we had to fly drone mission at every nest, and cover about 120 km up and down the fast river waters.