Bird & Wildlife Watching

You have been looking at the same slope through the same scope for forty minutes, and nobody in the group has said anything. Then the guide calls a clock position — “two o’clock, above the pale band of rock” — and you need another two minutes before you see what he sees.

You do not find animals here by walking out and looking. You find them by sitting down before sunrise at a place from which a whole slope is visible, and working the skyline systematically. Movement stands out, colour stands out, a wrong outline stands out. A bezoar goat stands motionless for twenty minutes and is a rock for that whole time.

The Khosrov Forest Reserve and the adjoining Caucasus Wildlife Refuge hold bezoar goats, wild boar, foxes and wolves; the Caucasian leopard is documented there and virtually never seen. We do not promise it. At Lake Sevan the subject is birds instead: herons and gulls on the shallow bays, and waders passing through in spring and autumn.

The binoculars are yours, the scope is ours. A ten-power glass beats any telephoto lens for the first look, because with it you search the slope instead of studying it through a straw. To photograph anything you still need focal length afterwards, and honestly some luck.

Nothing gets fed, nothing gets lured, and no recorded bird calls are played. Playback pulls nesting birds off the nest, and in a reserve that has consequences beyond rudeness. We keep our distance because an animal that feels watched changes slope and stays away for the rest of the day.

Wind is the factor that changes the plan. It carries scent uphill, and hoofed animals then stand on the far side. Which slope we take, the guide says at the vehicle in the morning, and he looks over at the flag on the fence to work it out.

Six hours of watching yield maybe forty minutes in which something happens. More equipment does nothing to change that ratio.