As I mentioned yesterday, today we drove into Bosnia and Herzegovina to visit historic Mostar and see its famous 16th-century Ottoman bridge over the Neretva River. It “was commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1557,” destroyed in 1993 by shelling during the Croat–Bosniak War, and reconstructed “with Ottoman construction techniques” from 2001 to 2004.
We found the bridge quite impressive, and after I crossed it, I was able to get a closer look at the black birds I had been watching soar over the city. I first thought they were crows, but the only crows there are supposed to be hooded, and these didn’t have the light band across the breast and back of hooded crows. Then I thought they were jackdaws, but I couldn’t make out the band of light grey that jackdaws have around their cheeks, nape and neck.
Thus, I was forced to dig out some of the glass I was carrying in my backpack. My first glance with the binoculars revealed that they had bright yellow beaks. “What the heck? Are they some kind of myna bird that I haven’t heard of yet?” At that point, I had to get out my camera and long lens for a better look.
At first, they kept their distance, and I wasn’t even sure I would be able to use the pictures I could get for a positive identification. But finally, one relented and perched on the facade of a building nearby. It really did look like a smallish crow with a bright yellow beak.
Then, it went after what it came for, and I was impressed to see such a big bird cling to an old masonry wall with just its claws, as a woodpecker does to a tree trunk.
Next, it actually dug a bit of aggregate out of the old mortar with its beak. Ha! I did not see that coming.
With that “morsel” in its gullet, it moved to another spot and dug out another nugget. Wild! How’s that for a building maintenance headache?
Anyway, once I got to the restaurant that Anne and the others had chosen for lunch, I was able to jump on their wifi and discover that there is such a bird as the alpine chough, aka yellow-billed chough (Pyrrhocorax graculus). I read that it is pronounced “chuff”, they are in the crow family, along with jays and magpies, they “breed in high mountains from Spain eastwards through southern Europe and North Africa to Central Asia and Nepal, and [they] may nest at a higher altitude than any other bird.” In fact, they have been observed nesting as high as 6,500 m (21,300 ft), and their eggs are viable at this altitude because they “have fewer pores than those of lowland species, reducing loss of water by evaporation at the low atmospheric pressure.”
Oddly enough, Mostar has an elevation of only 60 m (200 ft), though we did drive over some mountains to get there, and Bosnia and Herzegovina has a maximum elevation of 2,306 m (7566 ft), so I feel pretty lucky to have gotten to see them at all. What a treat!
Signs of Life in Estabrook Park 