Bulgaria - Day 4 & 5 - Burgas and back to Sofia

We were back at the Water Rail site at first light. The situation was a bit grim, with smelly mud and an awkward position, but we were able to find some rubbish to rest at least our elbows on. I suppose it isn't supposed to be comfortable and easy, and if it were there would be many more wonderful images around. I was using my somewhat dusty 800mm lens, the one that sits at home not getting used for months and months at a stretch. I keep thinking I should ditch it, and then I take it out for one last adventure and realise how amazing it is. But there is no denying that it is a pain in the backside to use and even moving it is a bit of a mission, especially when low to the ground. But enough moaning - it worked out, and I have certainly never managed any Water Rail photos like this before.

We spent the rest of the day birding around Burgas, exploring the various eBird hotspots that came up. EBird is course only as good as the people who use it, and my sense is that there are not that many birders in Bulgaria to start with. We visited the Buffalo Grasslands, various spots around Pomorie, Burgas Lake itself (a spot called Vaya), before ending up back at the Salt Museum for an even briefer and less productive evening session than before. There were birds everywhere, but none were especially close. For full lists etc please consult the eBird trip report here.

The following day we started at the Water Rail again but it did not play ball and we left empty-handed. Plenty of good birding meant we were not disappointed, it is a very rich area. Much of it is essentially inaccessible though - Pomorie Lake is enormous, and the various shallow pools and pans that surround it are quite hard to get to. Take a scope....

Our next stop was the Rudnik Hills, and this is where is got a little interesting. We were looking for Woodpeckers following an eBird tip off, and found our way down to a small wooded area beneath a small reservoir. No Woodpeckers, but in the shallow shady stream beneath the dam we found a nailed-on Dusky Warbler. I clapped eyes on it as I dropped into the middle, but for the life of me could not get my lens to focus on it. It then promptly moved deep into cover and did not remerge, though it was extremely vocal and also extremely responsive. In retrospect I should have tried to record it, but that did not occur to me at the time. Apparently this is just a second for the country (we did not know this at the time) and so without evidence who knows where it will end up - the bin most likely. 

The rest of the day was spent meandering slowly back west towards Sofia, birding all the way. One of the joys of eBird is the map functionality which shades in counties or provinces that you record a checklist for. Our route was thus somewhat indirect as we zigzagged through Yambo, Sliven, Stara Zagora and finally Plovdiv. Our birding destination here was Kaloyanovo Reservoir, a well-known site. You can drive around three sides of it with care and we spent two hours here until dusk, notching up 50 species and a whole pile of trip ticks. Some reedbeds on the southern side had a few Penduline Tits, and in the dying light of the day I managed what would be my final photos from the trip.

Penduline Tit

We spent the night on the west side of Sofia, in the morning birding a tiny fragment of wetland in a posh residential area called Boyana Marsh. My guess is that within a year this will be gone. Mostly there were Mallards, but our target of Red-rumped Swallow put in an early appearance. A most incongruous bird in a very strange location.

With time running out we drove up into the hills above the city to Vitosha Arboretum. This was an excellent short stop with Hawfinch, Willow Tit, Nuthatch and Crossbill. Naturally none of them posed in any way for the camera, the story of the trip really! Our final hour was spent at Mramor Reservoir, with lots of fishermen and not many birds, before we left for the airport. It had been a fun trip with a lot of birds (once we had gone east), but from a photography point of view it was poor in terms of what we came back with versus the time spent. You cannot win them all as they say, and neither should you - it would be most unfair and so a reality check now and again is probably a good thing. A trip list will follow, we ended up on 131 which I thought was pretty good going.

Bulgaria - Day 3 - Burgas

We completed the final part of the drive in the dark, arriving in the small village of Kraymorie just below Burgas at a decent time for some food. Then straight to bed in another eclectic Bulgarian hotel; the kind where the decor leaves a lot to be desired and barely anything is still attached to the walls. This one had a mermaid theme going on as I recall, quite niche. 

In the morning we had a quick stroll along the beach a couple of blocks from the hotel, and I wa finally able to add my much-wanted Bulgarian bogey bird: Black-headed Gull. 25 of them in fact, I don't say this often but this may have been an occasion where eBird was simply, ahem, wrong. or whoever entered all my eBird history was wrong. Ahem. I did not photograph this momentous sighting so it remains forever undocumented. We got our first Pygmy Cormorants here along with their bigger brothers, and it generally felt far more birdy than further west; we had made the right choice. 

Pygmy and Great Cormorants

After breakfast we explored the coast immediately west of the village, Chengene Skele Bay. This delivered a good selection of waders that once again we could get nowhere near. Even the cowardly Cormorants buggered off, but not before I managed an educational shot from behind a rock which I now present. My Bulgarian list increased by Greenshank, Knot and Wigeon. In that order. 197, some serious excitement beckoned.

The best skywatching seat I have ever encountered

We gradually birded up through Burgas (there are lots of lakes and salt pans) to the migration hotspot of Atansovsko Lake. At the south side of this there is a spot where birders congregate to observe birds passing south, and without a scope we hoped to find some. As luck would have it there was one there, scope present and correct, and who should it be but Dancho, our guide from all the way back in 2012. I unfortunately did not reecognise him; like 98% of the population he now has a beard. The male population. But I of course have not changed a bit, and incapabale of growing a beard he recognised me straight away. Especially when I ID'd an Eagle as a Buzzard. With Dancho's help we got quite a good list here, but the birds came over at considerable altitude and photography was completely out of the question. Greater Flamingo became my 200th species in Bulgaria - again this felt rather suspiciously duff, but re-reading my blog from 2012 I cannot see any mention of Flamingos whatsoever so maybe this is in fact correct.

Dancho gave us some good gen about where we might get to within camera-range of birds, as well as news of a Bulgarian rarity at Poda, a Grey Phalarope. We had visited Poda on the 2012 trip, a key site for the BSPB, and I remembered it being good but hadn't been able to remember what it was called or where it was. In bright sunshine, the site for photography would only be good towards the end of the day, so we decided to head for Poda first, unfortunately all the way back through Burgas and some particularly annoying roadworks.

At Poda we racked up nearly 40 species, including loads of waders like Marsh Sandpiper, Avocet, Curlew Sandpiper, Spotted Redshank, and the mega Phalarope. This remained hugely distant, but here it is anyway. Proof we saw it.... sadly, as I will come to relate, this does not always happen. 

The final stop of the day was at the Pomorie Salt Museum. As Dancho had mentioned, we were finally able to get close to some birds. Mostly these were Dunlin rather than anything more interesting, but on day three of our trip and with basically one species satisfactorily lodged on our memory cards we would have taken anything. It was all too brief though, the light dipped and the birds moved further out. With some daylight remaining we checked out a few areas around the lake, and near the pumping station found a very friendly Water Rail which we earmarked for the following day when we hoped the light would be nothing short of divine. It had been a good birding day, the trip list had advanced hugely and my Bulgarian life list along with it. 

Bulgaria - Day 1 and 2 - a brief foray in the Rila Mountains

Normally I would eke out any trip into day by day blog posts. This year seems to be a low-volume one, perhaps the lowest since inception with a mere 62 to date, and my chances of hitting three figures are long gone. More than ever a quick-fire dollop of Bulgaria posts might help lend an air of semi-respectability. Could I get to 80? However the sad truth is that if I attempted this most of the posts would have no illustrations. I do occasionally post just text, but as any blogger worth their salt will tell you, a photo somehow brings a post to life. Not on this trip....

Iskar Reservoir. Note the Egrets on the left hand side at their closest range

We landed mid-afternoon and headed to the mountains south of Sofia via some lakes. These lakes held almost no birds, and those birds that there were took flight the moment they even saw our car. I have never known anything like it, and I can only assume that hunting is a big thing in this area. Iskar Reservoir, promising on paper, delivered only 15 species, most of them miles away, and shortly after we arrived, even more miles away! And I am not even talking about anything exciting. Mallards and Teal, a few Egrets, not birds to get the photographic juices flowing in Eastern Europe. We carried on to Malyovitsa, arriving as dusk gathered. It was cold, but at least there were birds. Nutcrackers, Coal Tits, several Black Redstart and the chupping of Crossbill. We had an early dinner, looking forward to the trip getting going the next morning as we walked up the valley towards a mountain hut. 

There is a well-defined track. I say track, I suppose I mean stream, as for at least half of the two mile walk water rushed down and we had to pick our way rather gingerly. It was a steady climb, and the view at the top was rather good. Birds however..... there were half a dozen Alpine Chough much higher up, and Nutcrackers were reasonably numerous, but it was pretty flat, with essentially zero photographic opportunities. Now, before readers start jumping up and down and saying that I should just enjoy birding for birding's sake, remember that this was a trip specifically to try and take photographs. I am a birder, but I am also a photographer. The intensity with which I pursue these two strands is highly variable, and the last few years I think have seen me drift away quite a long way from photography and back into pure birding largely thanks to eBird. This was an attempt therefore to do something a little bit different. And it didn't really work out, simple as that.

The wrong kind of Accentor!

Nutcracker. The only shot I got!

We debated going a little higher, but it felt so flat that the effort likely wasn't warranted. What to do. Mountain areas are never going to have the density of the lower elevations, but there were so few birds that our chances of finding a friendly one were extremely low. Early October, with plenty of food around, also meant that those birds that there were widely distributed. I think we had just chosen the wrong time of year to come here. Time to change the plan.

The Black Sea coast was the obvious choice - there would be more birds. It was also not a crazy distance away, Bulgaria isn't the same scale as Turkey. We could make it by the end of the day and have a number of stops along the way, including a spot in the Besaparksi hills that we had visited on one our previous trips and had been quite birdy. Well, it had been quite birdy in May. In October there were some Stonechats...

I jest, it was quite birdy, and we had our first Crested Larks, Red-backed Shrikes and so on, there were Tree Pipits on the slopes, Chukar in the fields, and Corn Buntings in the bushes, and thus it began to feel more like the Bulgaria we knew. But it was still an absolute mission to get photographs, a series of Stonechat from the car window wasn't exactly what we had had in mind! But not matter, when the photography doesn't come off, you can just go birding. Just without a much-needed telescope.

Bulgaria May 2019 - Trip Report

I'm gradually catching up on various trips I've done, so after my wildly and insanely popular series of posts on Texas (seven lengthy posts, zero comments) it is time to get Bulgaria over and done with. It is clear what my readership wants and I intend to deliver. Trip report means trip report!

Look, I'll be brief.

Logistics

• A three day trip in mid-May with Mick S to Bulgaria.
• Flghts - British Airways timings and prices were good to Sofia, and booking with a car saved a fair bit.
• Some hotels booked in advance, but weather changed our plans and one of these was abandoned. One of our replacement hotels was basically in a petrol station, but it did only cost £14.

Itinerary

• Day 0: Afternoon drive from Sofia down to the Thracian Plain, and then up into the mountains with an overnight stay at Batak Reservoir.
• Day 1: A large loop through the Western Rhodopes to Trigrad Gorge and then back to Pazardzhik for late afternoon birding in some steppe habitat.
• Day 2: Morning in the Besaparski Hills, before a long drive back west around Sofia and up to the area around Dragoman Marshes.
• Day 3: A morning in a hide near Dragoman before a lunchtime flight back to London

In short it was hard work with inclement weather in the mountains scuppering our carefully laid plans. We reverted to following the 'better' weather where we could, and saw lots of nice birds - Eastern Europe is fantastic at any time of year. We failed to see Wallcreeper at Trigrad. This was once the place to go for this species, but the very easy pair are no longer there. Other pairs remain, but these are closely guarded secrets by tour companies looking to extract cash from retirees, and we didn't find one ourselves. My quest for this elusive species goes on. 

Crested Tit

The brief time we spent in the Rhodopes was extremely pleasant, but birds were quite scarce. Our morning in the mountains above Batak was beset by mist, and we only saw one Ring Ouzel and a handful of Crested Tits, but hirundines were plentiful in the afternoon when the weather improved, including some Crag Martins collecting mud at Golyam Beglik. The rain caught up with us again as we left Trigrad and did not let up until we descended to Isperihovo/Novo Selo and the Besaparski Hills. We found some lovely steppe habitat here with three species of Wheatear, dozens of Calandra Lark, Red-backed Shrike, Lesser Grey Shrike, Golden Oriole and a few Black-headed Buntings. None wanted their photographs taken.

Red-backed Shrike

Red-backed Shrike

We stuck with this area the following morning, and wiggled our way through the hills to reach the motorway and return to Sofia. Some good raptors here, with Honey Buzzard, Booted Eagle, Short-toed Eagle, Long-legged Buzzard and Eastern Imperial Eagle. We arrived at Dragoman in the later afternoon and added Montagu's Harrier to this list, as well as our first Marsh Harriers. I finally found Sombre Tit, a much-wanted WP tick, on the slopes above the marsh, along with a singing Ortolan Bunting, and on the rather short boardwalk we notched up at least five Savi's Warbler along with Great Reed Warbler and Reed Warbler. Bitterns boomed in the background but we never saw one. Instead we notched up flying Purple Heron, Great White Egret and so on, but the marsh is huge and essentially impenetrable - the best views are from up the slope but would require a powerful scope.

Firecrest

Spanish Sparrow

Corn Bunting

Stonechat

Stonechat

Subalpine Warbler

Black-headed Wagtail

The following morning we spent in a hide in the hills to the south of the marsh. During the three hours or so we had the hide was visited by just three species which was not at all the plan! Tree Sparrow, Sombre Tit and Great Tit. Still, until the previous day I had never seen Sombre Tit, so to have them at point blank range was rather good. 

Tree Sparrow

 

Sombre Tit

Overall we notched up 114 species, but as a photography trip it was not one of the better ones unfortunately. And of course when you aim for photos the amount of birding you do decreases, so the species count could have no doubt been higher. This is an accepted outcome of course, but when the photos don't really work then you do question whether you made the right decision. When it comes off however....

Trip List

Red-backed Shrike

Pied Wheatear

Naturally the whole point of the trip was to photograph Pied Wheatear. Cape Kaliakra was the place, I remembered a brief encounter in 2012 that left we with my only photos to date, but as I improved they left me wanting more. Better. As you know I am obsessed with this family of charismatic birds, and I remembered that here, on the Cape, they were quite fearless as there are so many people wandering around.

My memory served me well, the place was packers. Coach parties, tour groups, families. Frequently visitors walked almost up to the bird I was photographing, and then saw me and stopped and wondered what I was doing. Meanwhile the bird flew off of course. It soon came back, it had a very clear series of favoured perches on top of ruined buildings (the Cape is an archaeological as well as a military site) and was quite the poser. I am going to put most the images on a different website, but a taster is here. I am quite satisfied now, my Pied Wheatear gallery is vastly improved. One day I will publish a book just of Wheatears - I just need to pluck up the courage to visit some fairly inhospitable places first.

Bulgaria - day 3 continued

I just received a nice comment from Dancho, our guide in Bulgaria, who, as a birder, really quite enjoyed being out in the field all day with a bunch of similarly-enthusiastic people, and all the while getting paid to do so. What a great job! I had a quick scan back through the various posts that I had written on our trip to Bulgaria, and realised that I had moved straight from the morning of day three to day four. The afternoon of day three was perhaps some of the best birding we did, and I have unaccountably missed it off, wrapping up my post just as I was climbing into the front seat of the van....

Day Three, scene 2. A Van.

No matter how hard I had tried, I had not been able to get into the front seat. Dick generally got there first, muttering something about advanced old age and his back. More often than not I was sandwiched in the middle seat in the back, so when a bird appeared on the left I got a view of Mo’s head and sat on by Bradders, or if a bird appeared on the right I got a view of Bradders’ head, and was clubbed round the head by Mo’s telephoto. As I did my best to catch a glimpse/defend myself, stonking birds paraded themselves mere feet away outside the van to the furious sound of other people’s shutters. All this changed on Saturday afternoon, and I got the front seat. I was ready.

We had eaten another three tonne salad in Shabla, and were now headed back towards Kavarna. The habitat was steppe – flat, dry, many stones, sandy and scrubby. It was magnificent. I forget exactly where we went, but broadly speaking we were heading south from Durankulak to Cape Kaliakra, which is a sticky-out bit just north of Kavarna. One of the roads was called Shrike Alley – look it up on map. It had a pair of Red-backed Shrikes about every 25cms. Progess was slow.

Bee-eaters, Rollers on wires, Shrikes, Pied Wheatears, Short-toed and Calandra Larks, Stone Curlew, Eagles. Stupendous. Dancho drove, we drooled – that’s the most accurate summation of how the afternoon progressed. Endless quality birds, often really close, and this was just close to the road. Imagine this magnified across the countryside, where largely there are no roads. The numbers of Shrikes must be countless. Thousands. Millions. We ended up at Cape Kaliakra, but this time on the top, where there are some archaeological ruins and some kind of military installation. I ignored both, unless Pied Wheatears were sitting on them, when I took a keen interest. Basically you leave the car near the ruins bit, and gradually wend your way to the very tip of the peninsula. It can be quite busy as it’s a tourist attraction, but the birds largely don’t care. There were at least three pairs of Pied Wheatears here, several migrant Red-breasted Flycatchers, and an Icterine Warbler.  It was the Wheatears, as you might expect, that largely commanded my attention.

From the point we set up scopes and scanned the sea for Yelkouan Shearwaters. Although in reality a large lake, the Black Sea has its own population of Shearwaters which presumably never leave, and although very distant, we picked up loads in excellent light, and were ticks for all of us. Not sure how you would get a closer look other than going out on a boat, and so you certainly won’t be hearing me shout “Yelkouan!!” at Pendeen any time soon, even though I do have some sea-watching plans on the back burner for later this summer – if we ever get summer that is. Safer to say July perhaps?

 

 

Anyhow, we spent a very happy few hours on cape Kaliakra, sea-watching included. My personal highlight was a Squacco Heron flying across the water – I won’t be calling one of them at Pendeen either – mind you, it’s a pretty straightforward ID. We left near-enough at dusk, another excellent and really long day guided by Dancho. In the evening swapped guides as I mentioned in Day 4, and then stayed up half the night drinking outrageously cheap beer and watching the Champion’s League Final, which went Chelski’s way after both extra time and penalties.

Bulgaria - day 4

In starting to write about our final day in Bulgaria, over three weeks ago now, I wondered briefly whether the moment had passed, and then yesterday happened. In essence, both days were all about driving and dipping - the two often go hand in hand, though I have had it happen on the patch as well. Walking and dipping doesn't sound as good though.

Gratuitous Shrike

In Bulgaria, we had swapped guides, Dancho having had enough of us, quite understandably. The new man, Simeon, had listened patiently to our remaining "wants", and declared that he had a cast-iron sites for most of them. Naturally, we dipped everything, starting with a nailed-on Levant Sparrowhawk very close to the hotel. We followed this up by dipping Grey-headed Woodpecker, and concluded by dipping Sombre Tit after Sombre Tit. Or I did anyway. Added to this was the need to travel the length of the country to catch our flight, and so given the excellence of the three previous days, it was inevitably somewhat of a disappointment.

Yesterday morning I was in Fife, having nipped across from Oban for a rare opportunity to get the entire Lethbridge clan together. In the back of my mind however, was an adult Roller in Yorkshire. A Roller that I considered twitching a week ago on the way up to Scotland but concluded was too out of the way. A Roller that then surpassed all expectations by staying in the same spot all week. A Roller that I was astonished remained one further day, the day which I would be driving past, and this time on the right side of the country. Throughout the morning, regular messages came through about its continued presence in the same field. My confidence was sky high, and mentally it was on the list already. The perspicaceous amongst you will know where this leading....

Two hours before I arrived at the spot that the Roller had been at for ten days, it vanished. I spent two hours tramping around some dark and wet countryside, seeing nothing turquoise, before reluctantly carrying on home to London. It gets better though, as I knew it would. First bird message this morning? Do you need a clue? Thought not.... To pretend I am not completely gutted would be a huge lie. To somehow shrug it off by saying I've seen loads really well in Europe would be equally lame. As I say, gutted. It had been there just about forever, and as I type, is still there. I'm not going back, even though I could. I've spent more than enough time in the car recently, and there will be another - which I am aware also sounds lame. And when there is, I'll probably dip that one too. Pure overconfidence was my undoing. If you ever think something is nailed on, and start celebrating early - Landguard excepted - you're doomed. Simeon learnt that lesson in Bulgaria, and I learnt it yesterday in Yorkshire. Bugger.

In Bulgaria. Whatever....

Bulgaria - day 3

It really was this dark

Heavy rain, and I mean torrential, greeted us as we woke up in Kavarna. We were headed towards some marshland/reedbed habitat at Durankulak near the Romanian border to search for that most interesting of birds, Paddyfield Warbler. The futher north we went, the darker it got. The rain got heavier, if that was possible, and every now and again an impressive bolt of lightning crashed through the sky. Arriving on site there was little choice but to sit in the van and wait while sheet lightning played across the sky, and about 10cm of rain fell in twenty minutes. Gradually it appeared to ease, and so tentatively we clambered out.

There we are, clambering out. Tentatively.

Birds were singing everywhere, mainly Great Reed Warblers, but several Paddyfields were also fairly close in. The reedbed was fantastic - Little Bittern, Purple Heron, White-winged Black Terns, and gazillions of Warblers, as well as the noticeably thicker-billed race of Reed Bunting. We enjoyed the spectacle for about fifteen minutes, before the rain returned and sent us scurrying for shelter. This was repeated regularly for the next hour or so, with yet more lightning, rolling thunder, and stupidly heavy rain. You can never really pick weather during a holiday, and it's always a disappointment when precious time is wasted waiting for foul weather to ease. We didn't do too badly all in all, but it was rather unsettled for the whole of our stay.

News of a drenched Red-footed Falcon looking exceedling miserable on some wires a couple of miles down the road cheered us up, so so off we pootled to have a look. It was one of the wettest birds I have seen in a long time, you could tell it didn't want to be there and was hugely regretful of it's chosen migration route. It's a rare bird in Bulgaria, whereas it's a common one in neighbouring Hungary, and we didn't see more than four the entire trip. Naturally Mo wet himself when he saw it, but seeing as we were all fairly wet anyway, nobody other than me noticed.

We spent the rest of the morning on the beach at Shabla, watching migration happen. It was very much like being in Wanstead. Rollers flew by, as they do, and so did Orioles and Bee-eaters, and best of all we were treated to a Nightjar coming in-off, not something you see every day, even in Wanstead. The rain seemed to have passed now, and it became extremely hot and muggy. Time for another enormous salad lunch and a cold and extremely cheap beer, via a Tawny Pipit in the dunes, before heading towards some of the amazing steppe habitat we had passed on the way north. This time I bagged the front seat....and very happy that made me a little later on.

Viz-migging in Bulgaria

Snuffi does the Black Sea