birding...

Common Crane Grus grus ©Arto Juvonen http://www.digiscoping.fi/ Russia is the largest country in the world with its land covering 16,995,800 square kilometres and water covering an additional 79,400 square kilometres. The population in July 2005 was estimated at 143,420,309 persons. Russia consists of 89 separate administrative divisions. The Climate ranges from dry steppes in the south through humid continental in much of European Russia; sub-arctic in Siberia to tundra climate in the polar north; winters vary from cool along the Black Sea coast to frigid in Siberia; summers vary from warm in the steppes to cool along the Arctic coast. The terrain consists of broad plains with low hills west of the Urals; vast coniferous forest and tundra in Siberia; uplands and mountains along the southern border regions. The country is contained entirely within the Palaearctic geographical region although Kamtschatka, in the extreme east, shows a close relationship with Northern Alaskan in its avifauna, the narrow Bering Sea hardly acting as an efficient barrier for bird movement. The territory of Russia occupies a significant part of the Eurasian continents. A distinctive feature is the presence of many different natural habitats. It has extensive forests; mountains - Caucasus, Ural, Altai, Sayans; & tundra as well as swamps and lakes; rivers and seacoasts. The combination of different types of landscape and different combinations of habitat creates different fauna types, or faunal groups. These include European deciduous forest and semi-Mediterranean, Siberian taiga, Chinese, Japanese, Mongolian desert, Tibetan mountains and others. However, despite its large territory the number of birdwatchers is small and they are concentrated around the Russian Bird Conservation Union and its regional branches. Professional ornithologists are concentrated in universities, reserves and research institutes. There are a bewildring array of regions, districts, autonomous regions, city districts and opther political subdivisions in Russia. Rather than dedicate a birding page to each we have chosen to split the huge landmass into several super-regions which have similar climates, avifaunal habitats and so forth. Over the coming months information will appear for each region...

contributor

Jeff Gordon
jeffandolga@gmail.com

Andrey N. Baykalov
Webmaster - Birds of Central Siberia
hunter@lan.krasu.ru
http://birds.krasu.ru/eng

numbers

Number of bird species: 720

numbers

Number of endemics: 1
Siberian Grouse Falcipennis falcipennis

useful reading

Bird Ringing and Marking in Russia and Adjacent Countries, 1988-1999

Birds of Russia and Adjacent Regions: Strigiformes, Caprimulgiformes, Apodiformes, Coraciiformes, Upupiformes, Piciformes (Pritsy Rossii I Sopredel'nykh Regionov: Sovoobraznye, Kozodoeobraznye, Strizheobraznye,

Birds of Russia, 2nd Ed

The Birds of European Russia: A Field Guide

Where to Watch Birds in Europe & Russia

useful information

Arctic Breeding Birds Survey

Proact

clubs

RBCU - Russian Bird Conservation Union

Working Group on Anseriformes

Working Group on Raptors and Owls

museums

State Darwin Museum of Natural History - Moscow

The Russian State Museum of Arctic and Antarctic

Zoological Museum of the Russian Academy of Sciences

reserves

Russian National Parks

Wetlands

trip reports

Travelling Birder
http://www.travellingbirder.com
The Travellingbirder.com birding trip report search engine guides you to 7,000+ birding trip reports on the Internet. You can search for trip reports from a specific country and time of year. Not all these reports are in English. So, if you can’t find the trip report you want on this Fatbirder page… give them a try!

tour operators

Birding Pal

Ecological Travel Centre

mailing lists

Birds in Russia

other links

Birds and People

Endangered Animals of Russia

Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences - History of Ornithology

artists

Artist - Galina Reshotka

Library - Russian Wildlife Photograph Library