This was a
rather exciting day. We started off with rain, Wallcreeper views, rain, travel,
travel, travel and, 40 species of birds for an hour J Absolutely superb end of the day
with a calling Scops Owl as I am writing this.
We started off in Teshel. A small village in
Western Rhodope mountains where we spent the night in a cozy family run hotel.
Before breakfast the keen participants on the trip went out for an hour and
ticked Grey Wagtail, Serin, Black Redstart, Marsh Tit to name but a few. The
rain quickly sent us back to the hotel for breakfast. After that we headed to
the most famous place in Europe to see the lovely Wallcreeper. The weather was
pretty miserable with rain so we didn’t really hope for much.
Upon arrival we heard the thrilling call of the
Peregrine Falcon. A pair was sitting nicely on the top of a cliff announcing
its territory. We sat for a bit and scan the cliffs for a while when someone
shouted “I have got it”. The most wanted bird of the trip has turned up. It was
about 100 m from us nicely moving up the cliffs. Its butterfly like flight
showed its lovely red colour on the wings. What a view. Everyone in the group
was really happy seeing this bird. After a couple of minutes we carried on to
the next place where we were hoping to see Pallid Swifts, but it wasn’t the
right time. It was pretty damp and insects were not flying so no reason for the
Swifts to be out.
Soon we headed eastwards to our final
destination for the day – Krumovgrad. We had a few kilometers to go. Shortly
after departure we stopped again. It was pouring rain but when I opened the
door a Ring Ouzel called so I thought this would be a good sign. I asked who
the keenest people were and everyone went out under the rain. Well we managed
to find a shelter pretty soon and birds were really active. Soon we started
ticking them off.
Ring Ouzel was sitting nicely on the top of a
Spruce tree. A few were calmly feeding on the floor as nothing was happing.
Goldcrest, Whinchat and Black Redstart were also around. In a couple of minutes
two superb Firecrests made everyone happy. It was new to most of the people so
bits of excitement took over. Shortly after that we headed to our lunch place.
I would think we exhausted quite a bit from the rainy weather.
We had lunch in a nice local restaurant where
we tried a traditional dish called “patatnik”. It is basically of graded
potatoes, fried in a pan like a pancake. The long way to the east was really
slow. More rain, fog and slow winding roads. Just in the middle of nowhere I
spotted ‘tern’ like bird. Hm rather strange looking bird. Pratincole! I shouted
and everyone got off the van really quickly. A bird was flying about and some people
even managed to get a few decent shots of it. Well it was high time for some birding. In a
while we stopped at a gas station and we ticked Pygmy Cormorant and Little
Egret. It wasn’t long before we were in the paradise!
Chukar, Red-footed Falcon, Eastern Black eared
Wheatear, Black Stork, Roller, Hobby, Lesser Grey Shrike to name but a few. It
was really exciting. At certain point people had Red-footed falcon and a Roller
in the picture at the very same time. Yeee, this is Bulgaria J I really loved it myself.
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| Black Stork, copyright Iordan Hristov |
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| Red-footed Falcon, copyright Iordan Hristov |
It was already after 7 p.m. so we had to go for
dinner. Once in the restaurant, people started ordering drinks which was a
pretty good sign that the day was a great success. Someone counted about 100
species for the trip from its start. Not too bad having in mind it’s been
mostly travelling.
Looking forward to tomorrow.
Stay tuned for more bird ID news
