Fauna Holidays in Kyrgyzstan.

“Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Wild animals in Kyrgyzstan.

Fauna in the Terskey Ala-Too Range. Due to the mobility of animals, the vertical zonality of their distribution in the mountains is less pronounced. In the mountain and mid-mountain steppe zone on the northern slopes of Terskey-Ala-Too and the southern slopes of Kungei-Alatau, rodents (hamsters, field voles, red-haired cod, house mouse, mole vole, tolai hare) and predators living at their expense predominate among animals: fox, wolf, steppe ferret, steppe cat, porcupine.
In the middle mountains, at an altitude of up to 2800 - 3000 meters above sea level, there are many predators in the forest zone (brown and Himalayan bears, wolf, fox, badger and, less commonly, lynx), as well as roe deer and tolai hare.
Stone scree is inhabited by the now marten, weasel (Mustelidae), an ermine, and a red solongai close to an ermine. Ermine and weasel (Mustelidae), adroit, bold predators, feed on mouse-like rodents, but sometimes attack birds, jumping on their back and biting their head or neck.
The agile red-haired weasel (Mustelidae), fearless and sometimes runs about his business at the very feet of a person. In 1944, more than 200 squirrel (Sciurus) teleuts were released in the spruce forests of the Aksu (Jyland) gorge in Terskey Ala-Too.
Despite the competition of the Tien-Shan walnut, eating spruce seeds like squirrel (Sciurus), squirrel (Sciurus) survived, multiplied and settled in the Arashan gorge and other gorges, possibly due to the presence of other sources of food besides spruce cones: rosehips, berries of barberry, mountain ash and bird cherry.
Now in the gorges of Terskey every year they harvest several thousand squirrel skins (Sciurus). In 1941, 13 pairs of Siberian weasel (Mustek sibirica) were released in the gorge of the Tamga River. The animal took root, multiplied and moved to neighboring gorges, up to Chon-Kzylsu.
Siberian weasel (Mustek sibirica) gives valuable fur, and the best artistic brushes are made from its fine wool. In addition, Siberian weasel (Mustek sibirica) destroys mice that harm mountain meadows. The most shady areas of the forest are inhabited by thrushes, and predators are kept along the edges of the forest - hawk owls and leggy buzzards.
Grouse is rare. In subalpine meadows the common partridge is a beautiful partridge, a beautiful and strong ashen-gray bird with black and white stripes on its sides, a red beak and pink legs. The bird got its name from the cry: “Kaglik-Kaglik”.
It has a fast flight, is very brave and often chases alpine jackdaws and pigeons. In Tajikistan, pugnacious cupcakes are kept like fighting birds, organizing fights between males. Compared to the forest zone, the alpine zone is much poorer in the species composition of animals: reptiles, all forest and many steppe species fall out of it.
Most of the animals inhabiting the alpine zone are rarely distributed outside it. Only a gray hamster, jerboa, polecat (Putorius), tolai hare, wolf, partridge and dancer inhabit all mountain zones from steppes to syrtes. In alpine and subalpine meadows there are marmots (near floodplain meadows), hares, in the cracks of rocks and under stones - an alpine silver vole.
The zone of alpine meadows is inhabited by Siberian capricorn and argali (mainly in extended sections of river valleys), a snow leopard reaching 1.5 m in length, a red wolf (less than a gray wolf and has a reddish coat).
The alpine zone is characterized by a combination of mountain meadows, moist meadows - saz (providing animals with food), with talus, stained ridges and rocks (serving as a refuge for many animals). Colonies of gray marmots with mounds of soil ejected by digging holes, with animals sitting near them, are an integral element of the highland landscape.
Marmots most often make holes at the foot of the slopes, including under moraine stones near the glaciers, and trample from the hole trails, usually going across the slope, to feeding places. The frightened groundhogs whistle sharply (alarm) and run to burrows, amusingly clapping a thick belly on the ground, by the end of summer, groundhogs almost double their weight and reach 8 kg (more than a third of the weight is fat). In winter, the animals densely clog the exit from the hole with soil and droppings.
Dry and warm burrow groundhog is a separate apartment with all amenities. A long (up to 15 meters) passage leads to a spacious (up to 1 meter) high chamber (the groundhog winters in it), which is connected by a different passage to the pantry-hayloft.
The groundhog is very clean, and in its hole there is a separate “toilet room”. Typically, a hole has one or more emergency exits. If a predator (for example, a fox) enters one entrance, the groundhog escapes through the emergency exit and hides in the hole of its colony groundhog neighbor.
However, sometimes a hole has only one exit (possibly because large stones in the soil did not allow the animal to make a reserve), and then the groundhog can become a predator's prey. Bears unmistakably find burrows with one exit, recognizing them by the absence of air draft.
Excavations of marmot marshes by a bear in the form of straight trenches are not uncommon in alpine meadows. During a deep and long (8 months) hibernation, groundhogs very economically consume fat: due to complete immobility, lowering body temperature to almost zero and a strong slowdown in breathing and heartbeat, the metabolism decreases sharply, as a result of which weight loss is reduced by tens of times compared to with a wakeful period.
Marmots are a valuable hunting object, and in the Tien-Shan annually harvest 80 - 90 000 skins of gray groundhogs. Rock conies (Ochotonidae) - a rodent somewhat resembling a rat - inhabits large families of scree, moraine and rocks, where there are many cracks for nesting and moving the nimble animal.
Unlike marmots, rock conies (Ochotonidae) is active all year round and prepares food for the winter, lays out cut leaves for drying in bare places protected from the wind, and then pulls the “hay” into the hole. Above 2700 meters above sea level, among the steep cliffs on the crests of the ridges, herds of Alpine ibex (Capra ibex) are hiding.
Bearded males with long, massive, bent back horns reach a weight of 100 kg or more. Perfectly adapted to life at high altitude, these slender animals admire strength and dexterity, at the moment of danger they rush through huge jumps up a steep slope.
Equally striking is the accuracy with which the Alpine ibex (Capra ibex) move over steep cliffs, using the slightest indentations and irregularities for support. Alpine ibex (Capra ibex) are very careful, have excellent eyesight, instinct and hearing, from a distance they discover a person.
Hunting for Alpine ibex (Capra ibex) is prohibited, they are only caught for zoos, animals are driven by dogs to a site fenced for several kilometers by nets. Alpine meadows and rocks are inhabited by Himalayan Ulars (Snow cock (Tetraogallus) mountain turkeys), flashy glossy black alpine jackdaws.
Usually covered with wings, the red plumage of a redstart flashes as if flashing a bird. (Snow cock (Tetraogallus) inhabits a high rocky zone of the alpine zone. This large, hardy bird is very careful, (Snow cock (Tetraogallus is hard to notice even when its song is heard very close. In the highlands daytime usually begins with a melodic song (Snow cock ( Tetraogallus before dawn.
On the highest impregnable cliffs, huge nests of vultures, vultures and bearded men, large birds feeding on carrion, arrange. They have a wingspan of up to 2.5 m and the characteristic features inherent in corpse eaters, a bare neck, weak toes that are not able to hold live prey, and a strong beak for tearing fell to pieces.
Prey rarely falls to these birds - a sheep that crashed when falling from a cliff and left to die Alpine ibex (Capra ibex), so that, having reached food, corpse-eaters fill their stomach so that, frightened by humans, they are unable to fly up and run for a long time, flapping their wings and burping pieces of meat.
The golden eagle predator (wingspan up to 2 meters) nests on trees and rocks, feeds on hares and other rodents. It is used by the Kirghiz as a hunting bird when hunting foxes, hares, less often wolves and gazelles.
For several months, chicks taken from a nest, and less often adult birds caught in rope nets on bait - a pigeon or other living creatures - are usually patiently accustomed to life in captivity. At the horseman-hunter, a golden eagle sits on a hand protected by a strong leather mitten, on his head is a cap that covers his eyes.
When the prey appears, the hunter takes off the cap and waves his hand, the golden eagle takes off, makes a smooth circle and, noticing the prey, falls onto it without a stone. Usually during one hunt the golden eagle gets several foxes or hares.
The glacial-nival zone due to the severity of the climate is poorly populated by animals. Sometimes Alpine ibex (Capra ibex) herds come up here, and the snow leopard wanders after them. The mountains are characterized by the variegation of habitats and the animals inhabiting them: in the same gorge its shady bottom and slopes of the northern exposure are covered with spruce forest, while the slopes of the southern exposure are occupied by a steppe with sparse vegetation.
Sometimes, over several hundred meters, boggy (saz) is replaced by a meadow with juniper thickets, and then a scree or a mountain steppe follows. Therefore, in the mountains in close proximity you can meet alpine, forest and steppe animals, inhabitants of talus and rocks, inhabitants of moist meadows.
Daytime animal activity is another feature of the highlands. Animals that are active in warmer habitats at night, in the alpine zone are active during the day. In highlands at night, the temperature is usually below zero and life freezes, insects do not fly, rodents hide in burrows, predators are also forced to hunt during the day.
Only one snow leopard prefers night hunting. Animals adapt to the conditions of severe mountain winters in different ways: some fall into deep, long hibernation (bear, groundhog, mouse), others make food supplies for the winter, and still others migrate to areas located below.

Authority:
Series Nature is the world. "The mountains". ON THE. Gvozdetsky, Yu.N. Golubchikov. Moscow "Thought". 1987.

Photos
Alexander Petrov.