New birding trip around Bulgaria starts from today: Day 1- May 13-21

With the start of the week starts a new birding trip around Bulgaria. A group of 14 British Birders arrived in the late morning just before noon to enjoy our birds. After a brief stop at a gas station we hit the road to Trigrad where we were aiming at seeing one of the most wanted birds: the Wallcreeper. But that would be for tomorrow.

To break up the journey we stopped in a small town to get some lunch and off we went just outside Pazardzik where we stopped in an abandoned quarry. It was great. We just took our lunch there and had our picnic while watching birds. We enjoyed lots of Calandra and Crested Larks. Brits appreciate them every time they see these lovely birds. A surprise for me was when someone shouted out a Stone Curlew. Well this was a real surprise. I have been coming here for over five years and have never seen any at this site. So, pretty good imput to my list for the site. Other than it we also had a low flying Lon-legged Buzzard with prey in its talons, a very distant Peregrine which was playing with its prey, a pair of Northern Wheatear, Tawny Pipit and the lovely and favourite to many people Black-headed Bunting.

Bessapari Hills, copyright: Iordan Hristov

In an hour we hit the road again to our hotel for the night just before Trigrad. The road to the gorge was pretty winding and only a few Crag Martins, Red-Rumped Swallow and Grey Wagtails kept me awake. Anyway I only had about 50% audience because some of the people in the bus had an early morning start from the UK.

We arrive in our hotel at 17.00 waiting four our trout for dinner. Weather is pretty miserable with some serious rain. Hope it will stop for tomorrow or we shall dip on the Wallcreeper.

Stay tuned for more news on the trip.