June 28. Ringed (banded) bird.

June, 28.
Early in the morning we set off to check up the Kava river. The river was still high after the recent rain, but far from the flood level.
The Kava trip was un-eventful, nothing special. We did come close to the eagle with the color ring we have reported in 2014 and subsequent years, and managed to get the good reading of it. It was sure “8E, not “8C” as reported earlier. This was a bird marked as a chick at the Tauy river estuary on July, 29, 2007 (with Dave Rimlinger and Mike McGrady). So far this bird produced only one chick (in 2016). The bird was not fitted with the satellite transmitter.

The season, from the eagle’s point of view, was not good. We saw only one chick on the whole river. June surveys done by Irina returned 3 chicks, the near-fledging time surveys had only 1.
We returned back to the ranger’s station late in the evening.

Update: this finding is reported here.

July 26-27. Rain.

July 26-27 was rainy (sometimes heavily), so we stayed at the ranger’s station. There is a resort being built near the ranger’s station (in fact it started some year ago, but now it was acquired by a local businessman, now a local politician).  The camp was threatened to be washed away by the Tauy river, but the team of guest-arbiters from Uzbekistan managed to bring 50 tones of concrete and reinforced the bank. The picture below shows the ranger’s station (small roof on the left), whereas the image dominates by the newly built resort with fresh gravel all over the place, and a new road (not yet connected to the Talon). Small quadrangle sticking into the river is the concrete block built to combat erosion. May be ok for now, but future will tell. 

Image below shows the confluence of the Kava and Chelomdja rivers. Rain clouds are in the top left corner. The storm is over.

At the end of the on July, 27 the rain-clouds were blown away, so we managed to check the close nests at the Omylen, and even flown a long (c. 4 km) mission along the Omylen river. The mission return no nests.  The Kava nest at the confluence of the Omylen was empty.