The Science of Birds - From the Field: Mongolia

Episode Date: July 11, 2025

This is Episode 119. In this unscripted “From the Field” episode, host Ivan Phillipsen takes you on a journey through the grasslands, forests, and mountains of Mongolia. Fresh from a ten-day scouting trip in central Mongolia, Ivan recounts his experience scouting for a future birding tour. Along the way, he explores ancient ruins, crosses epic landscapes, and shares observations of unique habitats like the Eastern Steppe, the Daurian Forest Steppe, and the Trans-Baikal Conifer Forests.Ivan highlights some of the most thrilling bird and wildlife encounters of the trip, from charismatic Steppe Eagles and Demoiselle Cranes to critically endangered Siberian Cranes, and the iconic Przewalski’s Wild Horse.Whether you're a seasoned birder or simply curious about the world’s wilder places, this episode offers a look at Mongolia’s ecology, avifauna, and wildlife. Learn more about Ivan’s upcoming Mongolia tour at wildlatitudes.com.Link to this episode on the Science of Birds websiteSupport the show

Hello and welcome. This is the Science of Birds. I am your host, Ivan Philipson. The Science of Birds podcast is a light-hearted exploration of bird biology for lifelong learners. This is an unscripted from the field episode, and it's number 119. It's all about my recent experience with the birds of Mongolia. Mongolia, as some like to say. Actually, I'm pretty sure nobody likes to say it that way, so do not say it, Mongolia.

It is, in fact, Mongolia. Now, I'm currently in Japan. I'm in Tokyo. I'm in a little tiny Airbnb thing that I've, been in for a few days, and I've got my laptop here with my notes on Mongolia. I've just chugged a large can of Red Bull, and so I'm ready to go, ready to make this from the field episode for you. Now, I'm in Japan for another few weeks, which is really exciting, and I will definitely be making a from the field episode about my experiences with the birds of Japan before too long,

so you can look forward to that. So just before Japan, I was in Mongolia and before that I was in China for a few weeks and I was in China leading a birding tour and since that tour ended in Beijing, I used that opportunity to bounce over to Mongolia for about 10 days to do some scouting for an upcoming tour to Mongolia and that is coming next summer. So next June and early July I'll be leading a birding tour in Mongolia so I was just there doing a scouting trip. And I was accompanied by my good friend Steve, who was also my co-leader on the China tour.

And this scouting trip was a really great experience. Again, it was about 10 days, and it concentrated on central Mongolia, which is also what the future tour will be concentrating on. So, you know, it's a large country, so this is just kind of the central portion of it. And I had a great time. It was very interesting. And so, yeah, I'm really excited to be sharing my thoughts about that and some of the experiences and telling you about some of the birds.

So I hope you enjoy this episode, and let's go ahead and get right into it. So we'll start off with a little background. Now, if you know nothing about Mongolia, and you know only one thing, that's probably because you've heard of Genghis Khan and you've heard of the Mongol Empire. Genghis Khan, also known as Chinggis Khan to the modern Mongolians, he started off this empire a long time ago and it reached its height in the 1270s and 1280s, and that was with after Genghis Khan's time with his descendants. And this ended up being the largest contiguous land empire ever. It was about 9.2 million square miles in extent, or 24 million square kilometers, and that's roughly 16%

of Earth's land surface. The Mongol Empire stretched from Eastern Europe all the way to the Pacific Ocean, it covered large parts of the Middle East, and extended from Siberia in the north, down to southern China and northern India. But, as so often happens with empires, it didn't last forever and eventually it contracted back to the sort of heartland of what we have as Mongolia today. Modern Mongolia is a landlocked country. It's bordered by Russia on the north and China and the south. It's a pretty good-sized country. It covers about 604,000 square miles, which is equivalent to 1,600,000 square kilometers. And maybe it's more meaningful if you can imagine that as about one-fifth the size of the contiguous United States, or about the same size as the state of Alaska,

more or less. But here's the thing. There's only 3.5 million people in that land area. So Mongolia is actually one of the least densely populated countries in the world. And about half of those people are concentrated in one city, Ulanbatar, which is the capital. And outside of the city, approximately 30% of the population is still focused on a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle, which is the traditional way of living in Mongolia. And you've probably heard of or seen or maybe even stayed in a traditional type of housing that the Mongolians use. In Mongolia, they call them Gears, G-E-R, but you've also heard them called Y-U-R-T-E-R-T. These are these relatively small, circular or disc-shaped homes that are transportable. So they're very easy to break down, pack up, and cart away onto another part of the landscape,

which works really well when you are nomadic. And in terms of what animals the Mongolians are hurting, there's a lot of goats, there's sheep, horses, cows, yaks, all kinds of stuff. But horses are the focal point of Mongolian culture and have been for thousands of years. Mongolians traditionally are excellent equestrians. They start riding when they're like three years old and really they're just amazing on horseback. And the central grasslands of Asia, or the steppe, S-E-P-P-E, this is where horses were first domesticated by people like the ancestors of the Mongolian. and other Central Asian peoples.

So in many ways, this is the heartland of the wild horse. So in terms of more modern history, until about 1911, Mongolia was controlled by China, and eventually it declared its independence and was eventually a satellite state of the Soviet Union, not necessarily part of the USSR, but very closely associated with it. And then when the USSR fell in the late 80s, Mongolia had its own democratic revolution and has been relatively independent and democratic ever

since. Okay, so that's just sort of the geopolitical context. Now, in terms of biology and ecology, when I think of anywhere on earth and I want to think about what kind of animals and plants live there, the first thing I want to think about and I encourage you to think about would be the biogeographic realm. Mongolia is in the Palearctic biogeographic realm, which covers most of Asia, all of Europe and North Africa. Within the Palearctic, within that biogeographic realm, there's some consistency in terms of the animals and plants. They've all shared a long evolutionary history together. So there's just a certain characteristic to that biogeographic realm. And if you're a birder or a naturalist and you've never visited any

part of that biogeographic realm, if you were to show up, you would see lots of new species because they live only there. So the trip I'm telling you about today traversed several different ecoregions within that biogeographic realm, right? So ecoregions are sort of subsets of a biogeographic realm. They have a smaller geographic scale and they are even more specific in terms of what species live within them. So when you hear the name Mongolia, you should probably think of vast open grasslands. That is an appropriate image to have. And the name we use is step. S-T-E-P-P-E. So the major ecoregion or habitat of Mongolia, one of them is the eastern

grass step. That really dominates most of the country. It's also called the Mongolian-Manchurian step. In terms of the climate, one of the things that dominates this step environment is the really long, really cold winters, but the winters that are also quite dry. There's not a ton of snowfall in the winter. And the summers are relatively short. This is at fairly high latitude, so the summers are short. And that means the growing season is short, and the breeding season for birds and everything else is short. So even though the winters are really cold, summers can be quite hot. So over the course of the year, the temperature ranges can be really broad, and even within the same day, you can get really cold temperatures at night, really hot temperatures

during the day, and that sort of thing. It has a continental climate. It's not influenced strongly by the ocean, so there just has these wild swings of temperature, lots of wind, and not a ton of precipitation. And then on my trip that we experienced the transition from the step into what is called the Palearctic Forest Step, so where the step grades into a forest environment as you go north and as you go into the mountains. And it transitions into coniferous and broadleaf forest that gets more and more dense as you go north or up in elevation. And the specific name for the type of environment we were in was the Darian Forest Step, D-A-U-R-I-A-N, Darian. And you see that name pop up here and there in the names of birds and other species, Darian.

And what that comes from is Daria, which was the name of a land, and that land was named after a people, the Daur, D-A-U-R. And this was an ethnic group of Mongolic people that lived in the geographic region kind of overlapping southeastern Russia, northeastern Mongolia, and northeastern China. So with birds, you see that name in the Darian Partridge, the Darian Jackdaw, Darian Red Start and Darian Starling. And we saw three of those four species on our trip. So the Darian forest step is, again, this kind of transitional ecoregion. And then in the actual forests, in the mountains, in the Kenti or Kenti mountains, I think that's how you pronounce it,

K-H-E-N-T-I-I, that's north of Ulan-Batar, the city. Then we have the ecoregion called the Trans-Bicall Conifer forests. And this is a relatively lush environment with lots of trees and meadows and rocky outcrops in the mountains. It's really beautiful. Okay, so at least on the trip I'm telling you about now, we have kind of these three major reasons. Really, it's the step environment, and then you have the coniferous forest in the mountains, and then the transition between them. So on this trip, this 10-day trip that Steve and I did, we, again, we cover. central Mongolia, so we began and ended in the city of Ulun-Batar. We went west from the city

of ways, then we came back, and we went northeast into the mountains, and then we came back down and went out east into the step again, in a different part of the step, and then back this to the city. Ulan-Batar, which, if you don't know, is spelled U-L-A-A-N, B-A-A-T-A-R. This is the largest city in Mongolia by far. Again, about half the population lives. lives there. And this was my first experience, my first trip to Mongolia. And, you know, I didn't really quite know what to expect for the city. But I actually, I actually rather liked it. I think I found it quite pleasant. Architecturally, maybe not the most interesting city. But, but yeah, the vibe was pretty nice. People just seemed to be, you know, relatively pleasant, just going about their

business. Yeah, I didn't get to spend as much time as I would like walking around exploring the city. We kind of got out into the boonies pretty quickly. But yes, I have to say my experience in Ulaan Bataar was pretty pleasant. And it is interesting to see the legacy of the communist era in the city. You could see kind of these Soviet-looking buildings, just kind of no-nonsense concrete buildings. And some of those are relatively new, and that legacy seems to continue, at least architecturally.

But then you have some more modern or more stylish-looking buildings mixed in. There's a major river running through the city. That's the Toll River, T-U-U-U-L. There are some birding sites along the river here and there, both within the city and on the outskirts. And there's a riparian forest dominated by willows on the river. And I was actually impressed because it seems like within the city, a lot of that riparian forest still exists.

There's kind of a broad band of forest running through the city. And I'm not sure if that's because of the danger of floods. that maybe that's why they haven't developed it, and I'm really happy to see that they haven't. And I was also impressed because I saw relatively little trash in the river. Like driving along, if you look down in the river, it looked relatively clean. I mean, there really wasn't much litter, you know, rubbish, garbage, whatever you don't want to call it. And that is in contrast to many rivers that I've seen around the world, and you probably have two, where sadly the rivers that flow through major cities have lots and lots and lots of garbage in them.

So yeah, that was a pleasant surprise. Now, does that mean the river is not polluted? No, of course not. As I understand it, the pollution is a problem. There's just the runoff and the waste from the city, as well as the stuff that comes out of mining activities nearby, so pollution is still a problem. But I'm just saying relative to some other rivers I've seen,

trash was not as obvious. Anyway, another take-home lesson from Ulanbatar is that the traffic is absolutely terrible. Like, it took forever to get anywhere by car, and it would be much easier probably to just walk or definitely easier to have a bicycle or a scooter because, yeah, it was just insane. It was relatively calm and organized and low stress. Like, people weren't really honking. everybody was just kind of chill, but the cars are just moving really slow and they're just jam-packed and, yeah, getting around by car just really doesn't seem very practical in Ulaan Bataar.

So anyway, we got out of the city pretty quickly on our first day and we got out into some nearby ponds and areas along the river to do some birding. And so right away, we started to see some of the special birds that we were hoping to see in Mongolia. For example, there were a couple of songbirds that I was excited to see, and we did get to see. First of all, there was the Azure Tit, a really great charming little bird, very blue and white, very frosty looking, very cute. So that was exciting to see. And then there is another bird, the white-crowned pendulum tit, which is not a close relative. So even though it's got tit in the common name, it actually is in another family remisadie, which is the family of penduline tits. And this is a small bird, kind of black

white with a little mask through the eye on the male. And for those of us in North America, we have one representative of this family, Ramizadee, and that is the Verdon, a little bird that lives in the southwestern United States. So for whatever reason, there's just that one species in the new world, and the others are old world. So this was great to see this white-crowned penduline tit, because that's a special sort of central Asian species. It's always exciting to get a new falcon species and we got one right off the bat on day one and that was the amour falcon a m u r a really lovely bird and we saw it you know flying and being very active and i think maybe that was the only time we saw it we maybe saw it one other time but um we got really lucky on that first day so we had a pleasant

time just doing some birding just outside the boundaries of uhlan batar and then we started heading west and our destination was Hustai National Park, H-U-S-T-A-I. You'll see different spellings depending on which map you're looking at, but Hustai National Park. And my understanding of that name is that it actually means mountains with birch forest because these are kind of low-elevation mountains and towards the peaks, which where some rocky outcroppings are, there are some small kind of stunted birch forests. But otherwise, Hustai National Park is dominated by eastern grass step by that ecoregion or habitat. So now we're driving around and you're getting what you probably imagine when you think of Mongolia,

just these rolling grasslands that go on and on seemingly forever, or just these hills that are mostly green. And the grass is not really long. It's pretty short and stubbly, in part. That's because it's been grazed. You know, it's heavily grazed in many places. But within the National Park, there's not that much grazing by domesticated animals, certainly by wild animals. And in the National Park, the grasses are a bit longer, but because of the harsh environment here, you don't get super long grasses. You don't get many shrubs.

You get almost no trees, the lower elevations. And it's just really beautiful. These open landscapes are really evocative, really romantic. It's just awesome to experience. And in Hustai National Park, as we're driving the roads, exploring it, there are these really cool rock formations that just kind of come out of nowhere on the hilltops. You know, it's pretty much just grass, grass, with hardly any noticeable features. And then boom, this big jumble of fantastically shaped boulders.

Really spectacular geology. Very picturesque and very photoworthy. So now we're in the step and we're seeing some of the iconic step birds. For example, the one bird in the world that has the word step in its name, and that is the step eagle. We saw quite a few of these guys. We actually saw a lot of them just kind of standing around in the fields, either in the actual natural step or in some places in agricultural fields. And if you'd look out some of these fields, you'd see just like a step eagle here and then a little ways away, a step, another step eagle sitting there, and then another one, and another one and another one. and my understanding is they're well of course they're maybe just resting but some of them are

actually hunting they are specialists in eating ground squirrels and other small mammals and so they might be crouched down sort of waiting for a ground squirrel or something to come out of its burrow and then the eagle would pounce on it and eat it so there's the step eagle another really common raptor that we see out there in that environment is the upland buzzard which is a large beauty o'hawk. And in Hustai National Park, we're seeing lots of vultures now, so cinerious vultures are common. We're seeing black kites, which is a very common species throughout Mongolia. And then we're starting to see some of the iconic step songbirds, birds like Mongolian lark, Asian short-toed lark, Isabellan weed ear, and so on. These are all birds that

they're kind of walking around on the ground, they're tucked down in the grasses, and then they flush when you drive or walk by. And these birds are relatively cryptic. When they're down on the ground, they're some color of beige or tan or brown, and you really only notice them when they walk or fly away. But many of them are seeing. They have really lovely, complex songs that are filling the air on the step, and that's really nice to hear.

In Hustai National Park, we saw quite a few interesting mammals. The most conspicuous was the Tarbagan or Mongolia. Goli and marmot. These guys, these big fat rodents were everywhere, just hanging out by their burrows. But interestingly, elsewhere on our journey outside of this national park, we saw basically no marmots, even though I'm sure we were in their habitat. And the species is actually endangered, and the reason is it's been heavily hunted. So it's protected within the national park, but not so much outside. And so for probably thousands of years, humans have been hunting these things, and Hustai National Park is one of their big strongholds.

Hustai National Park is famous for mammals in general. There are gray wolves running around. We didn't see any, but I used to know they're there. But what we did see is the poster child and the rock star of the national park, and that is Persiavolski's wild horse. Presivalskies, depending how you want to pronounce it, it's spelled P-R-Z-E-V-A-L S-K-I. Percivalsky. It's a Polish name. Persiavolski's wild horse. So this species has an interesting history of conservation. It is a truly wild horse that said it was extirpated from Mongolia. There

were none left for a while. They were kept only in captivity and bred in captivity. And then I think it was in the 90s, yeah, the 90s that it was reintroduced to Mongolia and the modern population has grown from there. So these horses have been brought back into the wild, and that's just really cool. And this is a special thing to me, because when I was a kid, my dad took me to the zoo in Southern California, and I'm pretty sure it was the L.A. Zoo where they had some of these horses, and my dad was trying to impress upon me how special it was. Like, these were wild horses.

All the other horses we see are domesticated, and they have been for thousands of years. They aren't like the wild horses that used to exist, the original horse. the O.G. horse. And when my dad was telling me that and showing me these horses, they would have all been in captivity. There would have been none in the wild. So now, here I am in Mongolia, looking at these wild horses that have been repatriated, reintroduced. And that was just a really special thing. My dad passed away a long time ago, but he's the one who instilled a lot of this love of nature in me, and so I know he would be really happy to know that there I am looking at Percivalsky's wild horse. And let me tell you about my experience the first time seeing these horses. So we have

our local Mongolian guide and he knows the deal of where these horses tend to be. And he takes us out at sunset to this particular area where there's some ponds and some little stream in a landscape that is otherwise quite dry. And the horses are known to come down in the evening, come out of the hills to drink and to forage around the water. So we're driving around exploring the park, doing birding, having a great time, working our way towards this location. And when we get there, there's kind of a storm building on the horizon. The wind has picked up and the temperatures have dropped and there are dark clouds surrounding us. And lo and behold, we look over a rise down to some water and there is the first Preservalski's wild horse that I've ever seen. There it is.

super cool. It's this stocky, tan-colored horse with dark legs, a really handsome animal. And in that moment, there's lightning going off in the distance in these dark clouds right behind the horse. And then we look up and there's a golden eagle soaring across right over the horse. And then from the other direction, there's a Scenarius vulture. And it was just like this total epic metal amazing moment where you have this, you know, all these species coming together with the lightning and everything. was just totally awesome. A very satisfying moment. So that was Hustai National Park. We continued onward to the west to another national park called Kognokan, or Hognohan. And we also explored the nearby Ugi Lake, which is U-G-I-I. So I should mention that we, throughout this journey,

other than when we were in the city, we stayed in gear camps. These are tourist camps, especially set up for tourists, but you sleep in Gairs, in these yurts. So you go in there, and there's like a central stove, and there are a couple beds around the walls, and it's very simple. You don't have a bathroom in there. You've got to go to the shared facilities to take a shower or use the bathroom, and then you go to a central building for your meals, and it's just really cool. You're in this camp either out on the step or in the mountains or wherever, surrounded by nature. So we had a garris. camp in Hustai National Park and then in Kogno Khan National Park we had a really cool location

for our gear camp which was basically in this this little valley surrounded by these rocky hills with just really cool granite rock formations really picturesque just beautiful and we did some walking around and birding in the area and this was a great location for birds that love rocks so we saw things like bearded vultures both flying overhead and perched that was really cool the lammergeyer You know, that's always exciting. There was a Eurasian eagle owl. We never saw it. We heard it.

We really tried to find it. But it was there. That was cool. We heard and saw Eurasian hoopoos bouncing around in the rocks. We spotted a Darian partridge in the shrubs at the base of the rocks. That was cool. It's always exciting to see something in the pheasant family. There were meadow buntings and pied weed ears in the rocks.

It was just a really cool environment all around. So it's kind of where the step meets these rocky me. mountains. And nearby, both, you know, nearby this national park, but also around Oogie Lake, there are these wetlands. So you have the ponds or small lakes, wetlands, and there were a lot of birds. So it was just really enjoyable birding. We could just take our time and enjoy all the birds there. So there were things like bar-headed geese, swan geese, and swans themselves, whooperswans, Demoiselle cranes, which, that was the most common crane species we saw on our journey, just really elegant, beautiful cranes. There were Eurasian spoonbills,

lots of gray herons, a bunch of different species of ducks and some coots and grieves and just lots of waterbirds, lots of waterbirds. There were also shorebirds. So there were a number of sandpipers like common green and wood sandpiper, sharp-tailed sandpiper, curlew sandpiper. There was common and spotted red shank. And then there were some members of the family Recurva Rostridi, so there were black wings stilts and pied avisettes, both of which are really charming and beautiful. There were gulls and turns. So we had blackheaded gull, Mongolian gull, white-winged and common turns, and also whiskered turn, gull-billed turn. So yeah, just pretty much in every direction there was something to look at and it was really cool. There are some

songbirds in the vegetation lining the wetlands or the lake. Special birds, like palaces bunting. That was a really exciting one to see. One that was especially exciting for me was seeing my first bearded reedling. And what's cool about that is that is a bird that belongs to a monotypic family. So the bearded reedling is in its own family. It has no close relatives. So for me, that was getting to see a representative of yet another bird family. And that is if I have any goals in birding, which I'm not sure I do. But if I had one major goal, I think it would be to see at least one representative species of every avian family, every bird family in the world. And that's about 250 families. I have not figured out how many I've seen already. I think I've seen a good

chunk of them. So it's going to get more challenging to see the remaining families. But anyway, that was a new one. That was exciting. The bearded reedling. And it's in the family panurity. So not far from Kognokan National Park, we visited the ruins of the ancient capital of the Mongol Empire. It was called Karakoram, and that was the capital in the mid-1200s. And then again, it was an important site in the 14th and 15th centuries under the Yuan dynasty in China, which was basically dominated by Mongols. So we visited the ruins, and there's this, there's a Buddhist monastery there, which is perhaps, perhaps the oldest Buddhist monastery that's still existing in Mongolia. And having just spent time in China, it was interesting to see how much this monastery looked

Chinese in terms of the architecture and the artwork. It's very interesting to see the overlap. Mongolia basically has Tibetan Buddhism influence. That came in in the 16th century. So there's major similarities between the Buddhism practiced in Mongolia as well as on the Tibetan plateau in Tibet and in the Himalayas. So it was cool to visit the ruins of Karakorum, to see the monastery, to see these, you know, things that were hundreds of years old, very, very, a cool cultural experience in the area.

So after a few days of exploring that area with the wetlands, and actually there's some sand dunes there, we didn't get out into the sand dunes, like we didn't walk in them, but it's really cool to see them. That's also where we got to see our first domesticated Bactrian camels. So these are the two humped camels that are native to Central Asia. There were quite a few of them around. In part, it's kind of a tourist thing where people go to ride around on the camels. There are wild bactrian camels that still exist.

They're in southern Mongolia. And we did not see any wild members of that species, but just the domesticated ones, but still very cool, a very important icon of that part of the world. So then it was time to return east, and we went all the way. We kind of circumvented the city Ulunbatar because of the traffic, and we went into the mountains to the northeast of the city to visit yet another national park. This one called Gorki Terrells National Park. And, you know, my pronunciation of Mongolian words is probably way off,

because talking to our Mongolian guides, you know, every time we asked them how to pronounce something in Mongolian, it was, they would say it and it'd be like, oh, okay, cool. Yeah, like, I can't say that. That's tricky. I think it would be a very difficult language to learn for me personally. The pronunciation, yeah, there's just a lot of interesting sounds that are produced in Mongolian. Anyway, Gorky Terrells, that's what I'm going to call it. That's the national park.

And this is in the Kentai or Kenti Mountains. And now this is where we go into that transition from the step into the forest. We're seeing many more trees, lots of coniferous trees, especially Siberian larch, lots of larches, maybe some Darian larch, I know that's another species there, as well as Siberian pine and some other conifers, as well as along the river, there were plenty of deciduous trees like poplars and things. And it was just a really beautiful environment. Gorky Terrell's National Park in particular has just these epic rock outcroppings, even more dramatic and more fantastical-looking. rocks like something out of a fantasy movie. Very beautiful, very inspiring. So in this environment, now we're in more or less a mountain environment. We have a coniferous forest, so we're seeing a different set of species, things like oriental cuckoo, erasian j, willow tit, great tit, yellow-browed

warbler, erasian nut hatch, erasian tree creeper, red-throated thrush, tiger flycatcher, and so on. One of the more vocal and easily findable birds was the pine bunting, so that was a nice target that was easy to find there in the forest. A really handsome looking bunting, kind of this cinnamon brown color with a rich pattern. So when we went birding, we went up to these kind of high slopes. We probably got up to about 6,000 feet in elevation, and we were clambering around looking for interesting birds. This is one place that it's at least possible to see the black building. the caper-kaley, that very large grouse species. We did not, but it is possible there. I think it's sort of unlikely. You got to really try for it. There's also ural owls that hang out in this area.

Another target for many birders in that area is the Chinese bush warbler, which has this very insect-like song. And we tried for that bird, but did not find it. It's a very skulky species. You know, just a little brown bird, but a special one, if you're able to see it, it's in the family locustelody, which has the word locust in there. So not surprising that it sings like an insect. But in any case, we had a really enjoyable time looking for birds in that environment. And along the way, we actually saw quite a few wild flowers. So out on the step, there weren't too many flowers blooming, and I'm not sure how much of that is a function of being grazed to oblivion by the the ungulates, the domesticated livestock, versus just what would naturally be there.

These areas have been grazed for thousands of years, but up in the mountains on the hillside slopes, there's probably still some grazing going on, certainly by wild animals, but there were lots of wildflowers. That was really cool. So many interesting plants to enjoy as well as interesting geology, just a really neat environment. So then we went back down to lower elevations down to about 2,000 feet, so the lowest elevation of our trip to the east of Ulanbatar and to the east of those mountains I was just talking about down back into the step and it didn't seem possible, but in this area the step seemed even more vast and epic than it had to the west of Ulan Batar. It was just so impressive. So yeah, I was just like in awe.

So we had our last Gare camp out on the step near a river, the Hurlund River, and it was just a really beautiful environment, very peaceful, just nobody else around. And one thing about the step that I wanted to mention, actually kind of crossed this whole trip, was there are these plants in the genus Artemisia, A-R-T-E-M-E-S-I-A. And we have some in North America. We have the sagebrushes. So if you're familiar with, you know, the Great Basin, sagebrush, that's one species. There's also California sagebrush, which was in the hills where I grew up.

And these plants are very aromatic. They have this just amazing smell. To me, they have some of the best smells in the world. And I was surprised, pleasantly surprised, that there were a lot of Artemisia plants across the steppe, as well as in the mountains. And from what I could tell, there were a number of different species. I did a little research, and it looks like there are at least 40 species of Artemisia in Mongolia. So there would just be this amazing smell wafting on the wind. And if you, you know, crush the leaves up a little bit and smell them, it just has this wonderful smell.

Very herbal, kind of minty. Anyway, so yeah, we're back. We're on the step, and anywhere there's water, there tends to be birds, right? So there are these small lakes, and there's lots of birdlife concentrated around the lakes or in the wetlands. And this is where I got to see my very first Siberian crane, and that's really special because this is a critically endangered species. There are only maybe 3,500 or 4,000 left in the world. And this is a migratory species, so maybe this one individual that I saw was a migrant, or who knows, but it's basically an all-white crane with a reddish face and black in the wings.

Really beautiful. So out on this part of the step, in this reserve we were on, one of the highlights for wildlife is the Argylai sheep, A-R-G-A-L-I, which is pronounced in Mongolian very different than that. There's no way I can represent that or recreate that sound. So we'll call it the Argyllai sheep. So we went with our local guide out the first morning we had there after we slept there for a night in our GERS. We got up early, went out to look for these sheep as they come down out of the hills to drink early in the morning. And it was just a really beautiful environment along the Hurlin River with willows and the rocky hills on the other side. And we looked for the sheep and we did not find them.

Now, later in the day, we kept looking, kept looking, and eventually, thankfully, we did find them. We saw a few up on the hillside and that was really cool. These are, if you know big horn sheep in North America, these are something like a big horn. horn sheep, very similar. But they've been hunted extensively, which is why they're endangered. You know, the males have these big, beautiful horns. But we saw those live sheep, several females, not males with the big horns, but still pretty cool to see them. But we also found a freshly killed one, and we got to see that up close. And what was interesting was this thing was really freshly killed. Our local guide speculated that had been killed the night before

by wolves, by gray wolves. And there was the skull with the horns and some bones and all of it was very red and still kind of moist. And it looked like they must have been picked over by vultures as well because there was very little left of this animal. So that was pretty wild to know that we were not far behind a pack of gray wolves. It was pretty amazing. So, you know, backing up a little bit. That morning when we were looking for the sheep, we had a really epic birding moment, one of my favorite of this entire trip. And that was we're going along looking for the sheep, and my buddy Steve, who's an excellent birder, much better than me, he thought he saw a falcon fly by. And I should point out that at this point in our journey, we had not seen a Saker Falcon, S-A-K-E-R. And that was

a little surprising because we were under the impression that they weren't super uncommon. And this also the national bird, or is the national bird of Mongolia. It was designated that in 2012. So we're like, oh God, we can't leave Mongolia without seeing the sacred falcon. So Steve thought he saw one, and we eventually drove the vehicle around the corner where he last saw the falcon, driving along, driving along, and Steve spots one, he says, there it is, sacred falcon, and we're all super excited. There's one perched on this pile of rocks, rocks that are, you know, sort of human head size and it's a conspicuous mound of rocks and the bird is perched there and there's another one nearby and then they both fly away and they land and there's a third one so probably what we had

was a male and female and they're fledgling but the cool thing extra cool thing besides just seeing three sacred falcons is that that pile of rocks was significant it wasn't just any old pile of rocks it was as i understand it an ancient tomb a burial mound of some ancient Mongolian person that has been there probably about 3,000 years. If you look at it from an aerial view, you'd see a circular mound of rocks with an empty space and an outer ring of rocks. And that's where we saw our first ever sacred falcon perched right in the middle of that pile of rocks on a 3,000-year-old burial mound. So yeah, Mongolia. That was a Mongolian moment for sure, one that I will never forget.

Okay, so let's just talk a little bit about an overview of Mongolia's bird life. There are approximately 530 species found in the country, certainly more probably if you're considering the rare vagrants or accidentals. And of those, we saw on our scouting trip here, we saw 139 species. And the thing is about Mongolia, a place like that, it's not about the bird diversity. You know, this isn't the tropics. It isn't a place you go to see huge numbers of bird species. It's more about what kind of birds you're seeing, the experiences you have with them,

like that sacred falcon moment I told you about, or golden eagles flying over Percivalski's wild horses, you know, stuff like that. Special moments and experiences. So as I said, we saw 139 species. And for me, of those, 34 were lifers, were species that I had never seen. anywhere else before. So that was really cool, very exciting. Now, even though Mongolia is a large country, it doesn't actually have any endemic species. So Mongolia has no bird species that are found only in Mongolia. There are maybe a few what we would call near endemics, birds that are

mostly confined to Mongolia, but maybe get a little bit outside of those borders. For example, there's the Mongolian ground jay, also called Henderson's ground jay. And many of the birds in Mongolia are species you would find more widespread across those latitudes in Eurasia. Quite a few species in Mongolia are the same species you would find in the UK or in Western Europe, all across that band of habitat or all across the Palearctic. But there are some special groups we can single out, things that you might expect if you're visiting Mongolia. Specialties. And first and foremost, I would say cranes. There are eight species possible in Mongolia. And as I mentioned, we saw four. So we saw the Demoiselle crane, white nape crane, common crane and Siberian crane. And yeah,

I mean, there are only 15 crane species in the world. So seeing four in one place is pretty amazing. And cranes are just always exciting, right? They're just big, elegant, charismatic birds, and because we were there at that time of year, we got to see pretty much all of them except for the Siberian crane with Colts, with Young, and their big gangly, fuzzy chicks walking around with their parents, and they're adorable, and that was just really cool. Mongolia is also a great place to go see raptors, so birds that are in the family excipitrity, so hawks and eagles, things like that, or owls, or vultures, or falcons, all of those things. I mentioned the step eagle. We also had the booted eagle, golden eagle, white-tailed eagle.

And, you know, I was having this conversation with Steve on the journey about eagles. And the question is, you know, what is an eagle? Is it eagle? Is there any particular lineage of birds that is eagles? In other words, you know, from a biologist might ask, you know, do eagles form a monophyletic group? Do they have a single common ancestor? And the answer is no. Eagle is just a term we use that we generally apply to large members of the family ex-sipatrity, relatively large ones that have big hooked bills and that are kind of powerful and, you know, aggressive predators. But biologically, the name Eagle isn't all that meaningful. We could call them hawks, and that would be appropriate as well. Or even buzzards. Those are all

members of the family ex-sipatrity. Anyway, just a sidebar. I mean, I am going to do an entire episode, of course, on the family Excipitriti, and we'll get into all that. Now, speaking of members of that family, there's the black kite. And I have to mention the black kite, because that is probably, if not the most common bird you see, certainly one of the most common. Something catches your eyes, you're driving, or walking along, you're a raptor, and you look up black kite, because, yeah, just a really common bird, it's a generalist, they're all over the place, and they're very cool.

They're neat birds, and they have a really wide distribution across. the old world. So it's a good bird to get to know. And it's, you know, because it's so common, you want to get to know it as sort of a baseline bird, that's what we call them on our tours. Know the baseline birds. That way you know when you see something new and different, that it's not just, oh, oh, it's the baseline bird. Yet again, it's another black kite. You think, oh, no, that's not, I know a black kite and that's not a black kite. That's something different. Mongolia is also a good place to see vultures. You've got this wide open habitat, lots of grasslands, lots of livestock that has to die eventually.

And you've got these rocky promontories that make great nesting sites for vultures. So the two that we saw were the Scenarius vulture and the bearded vulture. The bearded vulture or Lamergeyer, we only saw a few of them, but we saw lots of Scenarius vultures, which are just these big, big vultures, broad wings, really impressive when you see them, and they're kind of all over the place. Now, when it comes to passerine birds or songbirds, perching birds, there are a few outstanding groups, and we might lump these together as the so-called dirt birds. These are birds that spend a lot of time on the ground, that are nesting on the ground,

and the three groups would be the larks, the weed ears, and the pippets. We saw multiple representatives of each of those families. These are birds that tend to be kind of earth-toned or streaky. their camouflage, they blend in well, except sometimes when they're flying, then you might see more patterning, more contrast, either their tails or their wings, but there are a lot of these dirt birds running around.

And again, you know, thinking of baseline birds that you want to recognize early on and that you're going to see a lot, that would include the Mongolian lark and the Asian short-toed lark, as well as the Isabella and Wheatier, those guys were kind of all over the place across our journey on the step.

Another group of songbirds that was sort of outstanding was the buntings. There were meadow buntings, Godaluski's buntings, pine buntings, palaces buntings. None of them super colorful in a sort of classical way, but all really handsome and nice looking birds in their own way. And again, there were the tits. So we had several species, the coal tit, willow tit, azure tit, that little blue and white one that I really like, the great tit. and the white-crowned penulined tit, which, again, is not a close relative. It's in a different family, but still small, little perky songbird. Yeah, and, you know, one of my impressions about the birds of Mongolia, again, not a lot of diversity,

but a lot of really interesting birds, and probably just because of their environment, not many of them are colorful. You know, you think of the tropics or, you know, even parts of North America where you've got some brightly colored birds. Not so much Mongolia. I remember when I was putting together the brochure for our tour next year, that was also the impression I was left with was lots of birds that are brown and black and white and cream colored and tan, gray, and then just little bits of color here and there, you know, with a few exceptions, of course. But they've got lots of personality. They make up for the lack of color with their personalities. So yeah, that was just a little bit sort of about

the general features of the avian species in Mongolia. So let me just wrap this up with some general thoughts I have now about Mongolia. As though I'm an expert, I've spent 10 days there, but I have thoughts and feelings about it. And I'll be going back next year and spending more time there significantly. So I've dreamed of going to Mongolia for many years. Ask me why, I don't know. You know, it's not always easy to articulate or understand why we're drawn to certain places. I think certainly the history of the Mongol Empire has fascinated me for a long time.

And even though I don't think I'd want to live in these type of environments like the Mongolian step or, for that matter, the Patagonian step, which I talked about in my last from the field episode, these vast open areas with all this wind. I wouldn't want to live there, but I find them to be really appealing to places to visit. Kind of like the desert. I just, I don't know. There's just something about that environment. The wide open spaces, the big skies, the stars at night, all of that, you know, the silence, the emptiness. So I left Mongolia and, you know, there were, there were some challenges, just travel challenges like there would be, like you might imagine in a place like that. For example, you know, I'm vegetarian and Mongolia is not a very vegetarian-friendly country.

Mongolian people eat a lot of meat and they eat very few vegetables. So I found that aspect pretty challenging. I got by. I did eat some meat just because I had to eat something. But, yeah, you know, just some things like that that aren't overly surprising. Now, the birds and the wildlife and the ecosystems and the landscapes, all of that was totally awesome. Like Mongolia delivered.

I was not disappointed in any of those things. And, you know, just to be clear, I wasn't disappointed by anything, honestly. It was really cool. The Gare camps were unique. I've done a lot of traveling around the world, led birding tours all over the place, but never have I really stayed in something like the GER camp. You know, maybe a few places here and there. But yeah, they're really neat.

But you have to kind of know. you're getting into if you want to travel in Mongolia in that way. There just aren't hotels and traditional or sort of Western-style lodging out there in those environments. But I found them by and large to be quite pleasant and really interesting places to spend the night. Another take-home impression from Mongolia is that there are domesticated animals like livestock everywhere. You go walking around, you go birding in these places, especially wherever there's water. They're going to be goats or cows or sheep or horses and sometimes you are just walking right there among them you are part of the herd and you know i mean they're all they're all pretty friendly and chill it was fine

but uh yeah you know uh hopefully you don't have some deep fear of cows or goats because maybe mongolia is not the place for you if that's the case and it was really neat to see how important horses are to this culture to this day you'd see people riding horses and you could just tell. Sometimes they'd be, you know, what looked like a teenager or even a younger kid, and they were just riding masterfully. You know, they just really had just this, this elegance in the saddle, really impressive to see. So that was a special cultural experience just to see how pervasive horseback riding is. And, you know, I didn't have personal interactions with lots of Mongolians. I mean, that's just kind of not my typical style of travel. I tend to be out in nature more and

focus more on natural things. But I will say that the interactions I had with Mongolian people were positive and people seemed friendly and accepting. I did not feel unwelcomed in Mongolia. It just was all very relaxed and very nice. So it feels like, you know, a country that, yeah, that I would be happy to return to and to get to know the Mongolian people better. They just seemed, yeah, really friendly. As we were departing our last Gare camp, this was a family run a place like pretty much all of them are. And there's a really nice little cute family. And they came out at the end and they did something that was really touching, which was the the milk libation or Tsatsal, I believe that's how you pronounce it, T-S-A-T-S-A-T-S-A-L,

and this is where they use some milk. It's, I believe, cow milk and they have like a little wooden spoon and they fling the milk into the air to different directions. And they actually, they came out, a woman flung milk onto the tires of our vehicle. as we're just about to leave. And the cute little, maybe three-year-old daughter came out and she gave us these little kind of goat curd cheese things as a gift. She had a little traditional outfit on, really adorable. And my understanding of this satsal milk libation ceremony or tradition

is that it's used for many, in many different contexts, I think. But when a person sets out on a journey or they're departing, the elders or hosts, like in this case, these would be the hosts, they would sprinkle milk in all the directions, the sky, the earth, the four cardinal directions, and it's a way of wishing the travelers good luck and safe travels and to purify the path. And it has roots in a shamanic tradition as well as Buddhist traditions. So, yeah, that was just kind of unexpected and nice as our trip was rounding up to have that little cultural moment.

And it felt very heartfelt and warm. But swinging back to the natural stuff, I do just want to mention the non-avian wildlife briefly. So the birds are great, but there were other things, as I've mentioned a few of the mammals along the way. We were there at the height of summer, so there were lots of insects. If one is interested in insects, there were many to enjoy along the way, some interesting beetles. Like we had these dung beetles, which are really fun to watch. There's plenty of dung with the livestock around, so lots for the dung. dung beetles to work on. And in places, there were tons of grasshoppers, just like countless

grasshoppers. You could just barely walk because of all these little guys jumping in the grass. And I guess that's not surprising. You have an environment dominated by grasses as far as the eye can see, and so you have grasshoppers. And some of them were quite colorful with beautiful patterns or colorful wings as they were hopping or flying away. And then in terms of amphibians and reptiles, we only saw a couple species, but they were really cool. We saw, uh, we saw, one representative of the Siberian Pit Viper or Hallis Pit Viper. That's kind of a young individual, I think. We saw that on the road, got some good looks at it, close up.

It was really cool. And then there was the Mongolian toad, and there was at least one place we were at near a wetland where these things were hopping all over the place. Really fat little toads with beautiful green-modeled patterns on their backs. So you know me, you know, I love my herps. So that's always nice to have bonus herps when you're on a birding tree. But surprisingly, we did not see any lizards.

My understanding is there's only a couple species, but, you know, it was warm, it was sunny, there were rocks, it's summer. For some reason, not so much lizards. I don't know where they were. Hopefully, they're still doing okay and that they're out there somewhere. But really, besides the birds, in terms of vertebrate's diversity, it's all about the mammals. So, of course, Percivalsky's wild horses steal the show. Those are a really exciting mammal to see.

in Mongolia. But we also saw Mongolian gazelles. That was really cool. We saw red deer. We saw Corsack Fox and Red Fox. I mentioned the marmots earlier, the Mongolian marmots, saw lots of those. We saw a number of small mammals, multiple squirrel species, some voles. In one case, there was a vol coming in and out of my ger, my logging coming in and checking things out before we're heading out. Really cute little guy. We found a roadkill Darian Hedgehog. This is bummer to find a dead one, but we got to see it. That was interesting. So there's another species with the name Darian. And then, of course, I mentioned the Bactrian camels, but the domesticated two humped camels. And to me, that was exciting to see,

even though they're domesticated. So all in all, yeah, Mongolia, for the nature lover, a great place to go, see some really cool birds, beautiful landscapes, fascinating ecosystems, some amazing mammals, a few interesting herps and insects and wildflowers and so on. So, as I mentioned, we've got a tour that's running next summer. So that's in June of 26, so late June, early July. And we've got a few spots left. As of right now, I'm recording this in early July of 2025. So if you're interested, if this all sounds exciting to you, then you should check it out

on the website for the birding nature tour company that I co-own, Wild Latitudes. Go to wildlatitudes.com and check out our Mongolia tour. And yeah, let us know if you'd like to join us. It's going to be super cool. And even though I was just there and I had this experience, I'm really stoked to go back. And now here I am in Japan and I'm going to have,

I'm just on my own and I'm going to experience this country and see what it has to offer and I'll be. I'll tell you about that the next time. So there you go, a From the Field episode talking about Mongolia. I hope you enjoyed traveling along with me vicariously. I just want to put out a special thank you to my Mongolian guides. They did a great job of keeping us safe and comfortable and teaching us about their beautiful country, their birds, their wildlife.

So yes, thank you, thank you so much. And I also want to thank, as always, my wonderful supporters on Patreon. The members of my Patreon community are what provide me with a significant income to keep doing all of this, to not only motivate me, but also just keep me fed and housed alive so that I can keep producing these podcast episodes and spreading science education for free around the world. So thank you, thank you to all my lovely patrons. The newest additions to my Patreon community are Anne, Jerry Brown, Mary Kay, Michael Esposito, Janet, Kara Parsons, Scott Harris, Val, Marie Heffernan, Judy Walker, August Kaiser, Francesca, Angel Whittington, and Adam Harding. Thank you all so much for becoming members of my Patreon community. Your support is so, so helpful. Thank you, thank you.

And as always, if you are interested in becoming a supporter, you can check out my Patreon page over at patreon.com slash science of birds. There's also a link in the show notes, support the show link. You can reach me by email if you want, if you have something interesting to say. I know I normally make a joke here, but because I'm traveling, I don't have my maybe normal mental bandwidth to create amazing, hilarious jokes for you. But in any case, you can write to me at Ivan at Science of Birds.com. I don't know. Maybe you're, it's a relief to you

that I'm not making jokes. You're like, oh, thank God, he's not doing all the dumb jokes, the dad jokes and all that stuff. Well, you know, enjoy it while you can because guess what? As soon as I can, I'm going to get back to

doing my scripted episodes with dumb, dumb jokes just for you. Anyway, this has been episode 119, and you can check out the show notes for this episode, along with, I hope I'll put a few photos of some of these birds up on the Science of Birds website, and that is at scienceofbirds.com. And in case you're wondering, I actually put out a request a little while

ago to my Patreon supporters for questions for the next Ask Me Anything episode. So if you're like, hey, dude, I submitted a question. Where's that episode at? Fear not, my friend. It's coming. It's coming soon. Perhaps even the very next episode will be an Ask Me Anything AMA episode. And I will answer questions. from my patrons about birds because they're curious and I'm going to give them some answers. And one more thing, don't forget

that I've got a lot of t-shirts that I designed that I'm selling on birdmerch.com. I'm super excited about this. I'm looking forward to getting home and making new designs. This is my newest little side quest which is creating and selling

bird shirts for the people. So check that out at birdmerch.com. I'm Ivan Philipson. I wish you a lovely Day from Tokyo, Japan, and I'll talk to you next time. Peace.