Birds

The Bakhtiare people live in and around the valleys of the Zagros Mountains so they have a diverse amount of birds in the area. Of 324 breeding species, 131 occur widely in the Palearctic region, 81 are Western Palearctic species, reaching the easternmost extremities of their ranges in Iran, while 19 are typically Eastern Palearctic species, reaching the westernmost tip of their ranges in Iran. Despite the fact that large portions of the country are arid to semi-arid, Iran possesses a very rich and diverse bird fauna; over 490 species are known to have occurred. Two main factors are responsible for this; the great range of habitats from permanent snows to deep deserts and from lush deciduous forest in the north to palm groves and mangroves in the south and Iran’s position at a crossroads between three major faunal regions. The bulk of the country lies within the Palearctic faunal region, which stretches from Europe and North Africa across north and central Asia to the Soviet Far East and Japan. Lying along the southern edge of this region, Iran’s bird fauna includes a large Western Palearctic faunal element, reaching its eastern extremity in the central Alborz and Zagros mountains, and a smaller, but still marked, Eastern Palearctic element, which extends into northeastern Iran in the highlands of Khorasan. In a number of cases, western and eastern forms either closely related species or well differen­tiated subspecies of a single species come together with a narrow zone of hybridization in the central Alborz. The birds vary from which part of the mountain they are located but the most popular birds in these locations are the snow finch, caspian snow-cock, green woodpecker, robins, geese, swans, coots. Those are just some of the most popular species of the birds, they have between 20000 to 25000 different pairs of flamingos and 1000 to 1600 pairs of white pelicans and other birds similar to them. Regular censuses in recent years have estimated the mid-winter population of ducks, geese, swans, and coots at well over a million birds, with perhaps as many birds again occurring on passage in spring and autumn