Alpine Birding Spots 2 - Adolf Pichler Hütte / Kemater Alm

Lots of people that come to the Alpine Birds blog from google are - quite obviously - looking for info on Alpine Birds. And I love to talk about the places I love going birding. So I would like to try get a new blog series going about great birding spots in the Alps - well, at the the places that I like to go looking for birds, or just to appreciate nature. Here is the second one in the series:

Adolf Pichler Hütte / Kemater Alm

These two mountain huts lie just southwest of Innsbruck, but deep enough in the mountains to feel well away from civilization. Surrounded by stunning hills and the towering Kalkkögel Mountains, this quiet valley is a snow hole in winter and a lush green paradise in summer.

Summer time birding:

Entering the Senderstal (Sender Valley) from Grinzens (see map directions to birding spot here), you will need to buy a parking ticket at the machine at the entrance to the valley, just outside of town (€3, there is also a boom gate there). Have a look around in this area for Treecreeper, as well as Nuthatch and Crested Tit. Continue driving slowly up the valley road, following the little stream. On your way up through the forest, keep a look out for Three-toed Woodpeckers. They can be very shy, so it may take stopping the car for a bit and having a good (quiet) look about. The best place to do this is probably at the open parking area about half way up the valley (where you can leave your car parked for a bit and explore the forests). If you are lucky you may pick up a Greyheaded Woodpecker, a black grouse or a capercaille (but no guarantees on any of those!)

The drive up the valley follows the stream so you really want to find the local White-throated Dipper pair, and maybe a Grey Wagtail.

Kemater Alm and the stunning Kalkkögel Mountains

When you get to Kemater Alm (basically the first buildings you reach), you will need to park your car. You are now at 1646m (5400ft) above sea level. Take the trail along a gravel road (signposted to Adolf Pichler Hütte), heading straight for the stunning Kalkkögel Mountains. As you leave the farmhouse area, keep an ear and eye open for Willow Tits - they can be very abundant in the scrubby vegetation and sparce trees, particularly just south of the gravel road, and along the next 1 kilometer of road up towards the hut.

As you wander through the open alpine grasslands, look for the Water Pipit and groups of Alpine Accentors and Black Redstarts in the boulder-strewn areas.

As you get slightly higher up, scan the steeper rough ground for Whitewinged Snowfinch (they breed higher up but you have a decent chance of seeing them if you look really hard), and the cliffs for Wallcreeper. Always keep an eye in the sky and you might be treated with a Golden Eagle.

Field of Mountain Pine and open high alpine birding areas

Especially at migration time, the large areas of shrubby Mountain Pine (Latschenkiefer, Pinus mugo mugo) can be filled with life and one never knows what could be moving through. One day I will find a Siberian Warbler there!

The spotted nutcrackers are likely to be a permanent (or at least frequent) sound on your walk up. They typically spend alot of time in the Arolla Pines (Zirbelkiefer, Pinus cembra) - gnarly old trees that mostly grow right up between the forest and tree line.

An Arolla Pine, aka Spotted Nutcracker food!

When you get to Adolf Pichler Hütte, stop for a refreshing "Radler" (a beer shandy of Sprite mixed with beer) and some Kasknödel, eaten in a soup, with salad or Sauerkraut (a traditional cheese dumpling). Soak in that awesome view and enjoy!

After a bite to eat, head further up the hill, toward the ridge-line saddle behind the hut. At this point the path takes you down the other side back towards Kemater Alm (and you car), but what it is also wonderful to take a little stroll out along the ridge to the north. The view is stunning and well worth the 5minutes of extra effort ;-)

The lookout point at the end of the ridge

Note: if you do go out along the ridge line, you will need to back track to get back to the saddle and go down along the path to the west - you will not be able to get down directly from the ridge to Kematen Alm.

The path now takes you north along the western side of the little ridge. There is more vegetation here than on the trail up to Adolf Pichler Hütte, so your chances of picking up tits (especially Willow Tit) are rather high.

This valley appears to be an important migration path for Pipit, Fieldfares and other thrushes and at times there can be very large numbers moving through (esp. in on the autumn migration).

Winter time birding:

Park your car down in Grinzens and walk the road up the valley. The normal road becomes a Rodelbahn (sledding track) in wintertime, so you will not need any special equipment to go birding here in winter - just warm shoes and clothing.

As you wander up the road, keep a decent pace and listen out for bird parties. The tits in particular can be very vocal in winter and so the best way to find any birds at all is to simple try to find the tits. Once you have located some tits calling, scan every tree in the area for anything else. In the snowy forests, the birds form mixed species bird parties. These can be large and they are evidently very popular with our feathered friends because it is seldom that one sees too many birds outside one of these mixed species flocks. Favorite wintertime party participants include:

nuthatch (Kleiber)

crested tit (Haubenmeise), coal tit (Tannenmeise), great tit (Kohlmeise)

short-toed treecreeper (Gartenbaumläufer), eurasian treecreeper (Waldbaumläufer)

great spotted woodpecker (Buntspecht), three-toed woodpecker (Dreizehenspecht)

chaffinch (Buchfink)

robin (Rotkehlchen)

blackbird (Amsel)

the other rather vocal group are the Common Crossbills (Fichten-Kreuzschnabel) - they form large, noisy groups in winter and the males go bright red. they tend not to be as mobile or nomadic as in the rest of the year, as they oftentimes breed in winter (when the Spruce seeds ripen).

If you make it to Kemater Alm, have something warm to eat and drink and then head out behind the Alm towards Adolf Pichler Hütte (closed in winter) - you might pick up a Rock Ptarmigan or Whitewinged Snowfinch out on the snow fields. If you are thinking about going in to this area (especially in late winter/spring when both species are getting ready to breed), then first ask someone at the Kemater Alm about the avalanche risk. Snow Finches are wonderful, but not worth uncalculated risks.

Best time to go: Autumn (the colours are great)

Interesting bird species: White-throated Dipper, Spotted Nutcracker, Three-toed Woodpecker,Alpine Accentor, White-winged Snowfinch, Willow Tit, Golden Eagle.

How to get there: go to the google map, click on the first P(arking) symbol and say "to here". type in your starting location and google maps will do it all for you. Grinzens is approximately 20 minutes from the center of Innsbruck.

View Adolf Pichler Hütte / Kemater Alm in a larger map

Happy birding,

Dale Forbes

Birds migrate at night - MoonWatch

Okay so maybe it is a silly title to give a blog post, but maybe you can come up with something better...

The spring migration is in full swing at the moment and it seems lots of bird species migrate at night. Now, this is fairly common knowledge, but what I did not realize is that you can actually see this while it is going on. This week, I have been helping out on a research project investigating migration patters of birds in the Austrian Alps, with this current phase being in the mountains of central Tirol.

So here is what we do: stare at the moon all night and see if anything flies by. Good idea, huh?
Well, I had not thought of it - I just did not expect there to be that many birds flying by your average mountain side for it to be worthwhile sitting out on the snow at 2500m for hours on end, staring down a spotting scope (as much as I do like doing that!). Anyhow, it seems that it can be fairly productive and last night over the course of a few hours we saw almost 40birds fly directly between us and the moon.



Our first go was on Sunday evening (5 April 09), where the participants got to grips with the methodology. The setting, at the Hungerburgbahn overlooking Innsbruck, was stunning and before long, we started to see birds flying past (they looked like pipits to me, but that is just a complete thumb suck).

Monday night, Silvia and I headed up to Axamer Lizum's Hoadl House (2400m asl), where we spent almost the whole night looking out for birds. It was cold. Very cold. But the bright moonlight draping the mountains was spectacular. Interestingly (and disappointing) was that we only saw two birds the whole night.
But the next morning we relished in the streaming spring sunlight and picked up a few of the really cool high-alpine species (4 white-winged snowfinch, a singing alpine accentor, displaying water pipits, and a flock of alpine choughs).




Last night we were up at Seegrube (North Park Ski Arena, overlooking Innsbruck). The first bird I saw as I walked out of the cable-car house was an alpine accentor right in front of me - this was going to be a good night! [for those of you who have not figured this out yet, I looove alpine accentors, they have got to be one of the coolest birds of the high alps, but I will leave my gushing for another time...]. We spent the late afternoon digiscoping accentors and choughs, and enjoying the stillnes of the high mountains, for everyone had left by about 5:30pm, so we had the whole place to ourselves. We started our survey at 9:20pm and carried on through to about 2am, but although it was not as cold as up at Axamer Lizum, we really felt the cold (I suppose lack of sleep will do that to you). But we were compensated by strings of birds flying by, almost all of which seemed to be flying down the Inn valley and my personal guess is that they we were seeing them flying at about 3000m asl. The birds we saw were mostly smaller passerine-sized birds, but I did see a group of 4 ducks fling close together - the quick wingbeats and size makes me think they were Teal (although I suppose they could have been Garganey, but that would be much less likely in the Alps).

What fascinates me most about this whole project is the sheer numbers of birds that must be migrating. We are looking at the moon through a telescope (25x magnification), and the moon occupies a relatively tiny portion of the night sky, so the chance that the flight path of a little bird taking it directly between us and the moon seem rather slight. Given the [relatively] large number of birds we saw last night and on Sunday at Hungerburg, I can only imagine that there really are huge numbers of birds migrating through this area - something that had not really occured to me. Certainly, the number of birds that I am seeing in my everyday life (and birding) in Tirol did not really indicate to me that the migration was in full swing. I suppose what is happening is that a good number of the migrant birds I am seeing every day are continuing on their journeys at night, and are replaced by other for the next day's shift. Either that or, the migrant we were seing at night are hopping over the Alps in one night without a lay-over in the Innsbruck area...

Insight anyone?

Happy birding
Dale

Late Autumn migration over the Alps

last week we went out to the Sattelberg, a gorgeous mountain overlooking the Brenner Pass, and split between Austrian and Italian territory. The mission was to try count birds migrating South over the ridge line.

We knew we were unlikely to see too many birds migrating through so late in the season, and the birds that were migrating were - I suppose - more likely to have gone straight up the Wipptal and over the Brenner Pass than to head all the way up and over the mountain top. At any rate, we braved the snow and winds to see what we could see.

As it turns out, we saw a good number of juvenile House Martins (Mehlschwalben) flying about (rather unusual for Tirol) but they all seemed to be heading North. Maybe we should have provided them with a map.


Also interesting was the large numbers of pipts moving through. They were unusually shy and quickly moved on. It looked like they were migrating in a boulder-to-boulder manner (rather than the rapid, directed flights that come to mind when we think of migration). The only species we were able to positively identify was the water pipit (Bergpiper), but we suspect there were a good few more about.

The only raptors we saw was one young Hobby Falcon (Baumfalke) which circled and flew directly over us, and a Common Buzzard (Mäusebussard).

View of Sattelberg from Gries am Brenner

Although we did not see too much, it was a lovely day to be out in the mountains. The Tirolean mountains really have something special to them.
A peace.
A wonder.
It is always special to be in them...



Happy birding
Dale

Epic birding in the high alps

Last week Andy (Schwarzenberger) and I went on a most epic of bird walks.

Well, maybe that does not completely capture the experience; "bird walk" for me conjures up images of late morning strolls, twenty 50-somethings, compact Nikon binoculars and botanical gardens where chit chatting is somewhat more important than finding birds.

Last week's walk was a far cry from duck ponds and park benches. We left the Kühtai pond (Sellraintal) at 5am and headed up one of the valleys to the South West. Our mission: to do a bird survey up in to the higher Alps. Kühtai itself is at 2020m asl and is one of my favorite ski resorts, but there is almost no snow left in the valley. As we headed up the valley, we found more and more snow. But still, the Great Tits were out and about, as usual, making a lot of noise. But it was the Ring Ousels that got my attention. And there were lots of them about. Nuthatches, Wrens and Bramblings added to the morning chorus.

Near the edge of the tree line, the bird diversity dropped substantially, but there were certainly lots of, taking advantage of the open land and melting snow. Everywhere we turned our ears, the pipits were out calling.


A little way up the path we started to get in to deeper and then deeper snow, and pretty soon there was only snow and boulders to be seen. It was way up here in the snow that we picked up our first Alpine Accentors (Alpenbraunelle) and Wheatears. Chattering away, the wheatears buzzed from boulder to boulder showing off their gorgeous colours - what a sight!

Early on, I tried my hardest to get some good views of the alpine accentors. Little did I know that as we neared the peaks/ridges we would be seeing them up close (but to be honest, at that stage I was more interested in not falling off a cliff or disappearing in an avalanche than studying pretty little birdies). Anyhow, these alpine accentors truly have interesting sex lives. For those of you with a sesquipedalian penchant, their breeding system is called polygynandry, in which about 3-5 males defend a group territory that encompasses 2-3 spatially separated females (cf. Heer 1996 Journal of Ornithology 137/1). Despite a dominance structure, they are highly promiscuous and offspring can be sired by numerous males (three males in Heer 1996!). Individuals feed in very loose associations (or completely independently) and dominant males tend to dedicate more time to feeding than subordinate ones (Janiga & Movotna 2006 Ornis Fennica 83). Not surprisingly, the alpine accentors tend to choose a diet rich in lipids during the winter, presumably for their high energy content (Ibid).

In this higher zone, we also came across Alpine Choughs, Snow Finches, and calling Ptarmigans. The Alpine Marmots also kept us entertained as they ran about through the snow and boulders.

Along the highest ridges, the going was steep, we had no idea where the path was, and were trudging through waist-deep snow. The fog was thick, but we were pretty sure there was a good view from up there. At some stage we decided to throw caution in to the wind and just slide down the snow slope on our bums and try to find the trail again at a lower altitude.



It seems that many high alpine species are adversely affected by ski-pistes; either through disturbance and stress (Arlettaz, Patthey, Baltic, Leu, Schaub, Palme & Jenni-Eiermann 2007 Proceedings of the Royal Society B 274/1614), or the reduction in the quality of open habitats (Rolando, Caprio, Rinaldi & Ellena 2007 Journal of Applied Ecology 44/1). Many of these detrimental effects can be minimized by only skiing on or close to pistes, creating "no skiing" wilderness areas, and by the careful construction of pistes (low-invasiveness, only using heavy equipment where absolutely necessary, and focusing only on the removal of potentially dangerous boulders).