People usually come to the cornice “for the views,” and let the sky above it slide past unnoticed. A mistake: the high-mountain birds here are not a backdrop but a sight in their own right. The Caucasus Reserve holds the status of an Important Bird Area of international significance, and its fauna includes 31 species of bird of prey alone.
Let us go through the ones you can actually meet (or hear) around the cornice, from the small dwellers of the crags to the huge scavengers with a three-metre wingspan.
The snowcock: voice of the crags
The Caucasian snowcock is a large bird of the partridge family, an endemic of the Caucasus, a dweller of the very highest belt: the crags and screes above the meadows. It is not easy to see — its plumage melts into the rock — but it gives itself away with a loud, melodic whistle that carries across the slopes. If you hear a whistle from the distant crags, it is almost certainly a snowcock.
The grouse: an endemic among the rhododendrons
The Caucasian grouse is another endemic of the Caucasus and Turkey, a rare and protected species. It climbs to 3,300 m but nests below 2,600 m, and it keeps to the subalpine meadows with rhododendron thickets — the very ones the article on the flowering of the rhododendrons describes. The males are coal-black, with a lyre-shaped tail; in spring they lek on the clearings.
The Caucasian grouse and the snowcock are true endemics: they live only in the Caucasus (and the grouse also in Turkey) and nowhere else in the world. To meet one is to see a bird that no other region of Russia can show you.
The bearded vulture: the one that breaks bones
The most unusual bird of this sky is the bearded vulture, the lammergeier. A huge scavenger that feeds mainly on bone marrow. To reach it, the bird lifts a bone high into the air and drops it onto the rocks to crack it open — a knack it takes more than a year to learn. Only 7–9 pairs nest in the reserve, so every sighting is a rarity.
Quick quiz: birds of the high country
Eagles and griffons: who else circles
Other large raptors keep above the ridges. The golden eagle is a powerful eagle that nests in the reserve; it hunts young hoofed animals and hares (there are even records of attempts on bear cubs). The griffon vulture is a large scavenger whose colonies keep to the reserve’s northern edges; it soars for hours, scanning for fallen animals.
Telling the soaring giants apart from the ground is not easy, but context helps: if a bird is methodically “patrolling” the slopes in circles without beating its wings, it is most likely one of the scavengers or an eagle, not a small raptor.
“The Caucasian grouse is an endemic of the Caucasus and Turkey. A rare and protected species.”— Caucasus Reserve, on rare birds
The alpine chough — and how to watch birds
The most frequent “company” on the cornice itself is the alpine chough: black birds with a yellow bill that wheel in noisy little flocks by the cliff, riding the updraughts. You will see them almost for certain, right at the edge.
A few rules for watching: bring binoculars, come in the morning, move quietly and do not approach nests. And the key reserve rule — do not feed the birds and do not leave food: it harms both them and the place (more in the article on the reserve’s rules). Who else inhabits these heights is in the survey of wildlife and in the article on the chamois and the tur.
