Facetious Badger, I, too would be quite interested to read about your birding experiences in Afghanistan. A friend of mine just returned from Afghanistan and it was comforting to know that he could spend some bit of his time with a hobby to bring some normalcy to his life. To answer a question you posed earlier...

There is only one book I know of that intentionally covers all the birds of Afghanistan. That book is "Birds of South Asia - Volume 1: Field Guide" by Rassmussen and Anderton, 2005, (ISBN 8487334652). This is an excellent book with outstanding illustrations of all species between Afghanistan east through India, Nepal, and over to eastern Myanmar (aka, Burma). Volume 1 contains exclusively the 180 color plates and Volume 2 holds all the text and species accounts. This set of two books is a bit pricey, starting at US$100. The cheapest purchase site I've found is at http://www.hbw.com/lynx/en/lynx-edicions... --

I can recommend two other cheaper books:
1) The Birds of Kazakhstan by Wassink and Oreel, 2007 (ISBN 9789081146210). This country borders Afghanistan on the north.

2) Field Guide to the Birds of the Middle East by Porter, Christensen, and Schiermacker-Hansen, 1996 (ISBN 0856610763). This book does not specifically cover Afghanistan, but it does cover all of Iran, which sits on the western border.

These three additional books include all the birds in Pakistan, which borders you on the east:
1) Field Guide to Birds of the Indian Subcontinent by Kazmierczak, 2000 (ISBN 0300079214)

2) Birds of India by Grimmet & Inskipp, 1999 (ISBN 0691049106)

3) A new book coming out in November 2008 is Birds of Pakistan by Grimmet and Inskipp (ISBN 0713688009)

Lastly, here is a very good website for photos of birds in Kazakhstan. A large percentage will be in common with Afghanistan. -- http://www.birds.kz/photosonlye.html --

Just as a little factoid, there is only one bird endemic to Afghanistan, the Afghan Snowfinch (Montifringilla theresae).

Best of luck to you.

inlägg gjort av Soleglad vid 2:05 am (EST) Jun 25, 2008

Badger: Yes, I had a feeling that you'd be dealing with a slow-speed computer. Pretty frustrating.

I did find this list of birds seen around the Kandahar base by someone who may have been a Dutch soldier (not sure) during a six-month period in 2006-2007:

http://www.surfbirds.com/trip_report.php...

inlägg gjort av tropics vid 9:28 pm (EST) May 25, 2008

Badger: Me again. As you will have noticed, there are a lot of bird photos missing on the site I sent you. However, if you go to Oiseaux.net http://www.oiseaux.net/photos/photo430.e... where the generally high quality photos are arranged alphabetically you can fill in a lot of the gaps (eg. desert wheatear).

Cheers!

inlägg gjort av tropics vid 10:46 pm (EST) May 24, 2008

Hi Badger: Here's a site containing quite a few photos of the birds of Afghanistan:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...

inlägg gjort av tropics vid 4:18 pm (EST) May 24, 2008

Facetious Badger: I used the term "adventures" unadvisedly, being well aware of your dangerous situation. As for the people of Afghanistan, as if things weren't bad enough, it sounds as though the food situation is very dire, what with significant and continuing increases in the price of bread.

Recently I stumbled upon this site - Russian soldiers describing their tours of duty in Afghanistan (in translation, with photos):

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=h...

inlägg gjort av tropics vid 6:19 pm (EST) May 23, 2008

Facetious Badger: I'm sure I'm not the only person who would very much like to hear about your birding (and other) adventures during your service in Afghanistan.

inlägg gjort av tropics vid 12:20 pm (EST) May 23, 2008