Bulgaria Trip Report Highlights

Having spent most of the early part of the year in a wheelchair, BirdGuides director Max Whitby has been itching to get out in the field and do some birding and filming, so a trip to Bulgaria seemed like an ideal opportunity. Max's new-found fitness didn't quite extend to carrying equipment so Dave went along too to act as a glorified porter - though, of course, he also did more than his share of finding and filming the birds.

The main aim of the trip was to capture on film one of the few European species for which we had no video clips - Paddyfield Warbler. In the last twenty years birdwatchers have become aware that this species is actually relatively numerous in some of the reedbeds bordering the Black Sea in countries such as Bulgaria and Romania. Perhaps the easiest site for seeing them is at Lake Durankulak, just south of the Romanian border. We first went there in an evening when 3 singing birds were found but the following morning there were dozens of songsters, some of which were as close as this bird.

Great Reed Warblers were also numerous, constantly shouting their grating song.

The other Bulgarian speciality is Pied Wheatear, which breeds at several sites along the coast, mostly where there are sea cliffs or at least steep banks. The headland at Cape Kaliakra had at least 6 pairs.

In this species, unlike the Cyprus Pied Wheatear, the female looks quite different from the male.

Eastern Bulgaria is very well endowed with beautiful woodlands, one of the best of which is at Kamcia. It was here that we filmed this trio of exciting birds:

Middle Spotted Woodpeckers were found in almost every area of woodland that we searched in.

Grey-headed Woodpeckers were harder to find, but this bird posed nicely.

Hawfinch was one of the commonest birds of the woods and some of them provided really close views.

Other exciting birds included this female Red-footed Falcon...

...and these Shags of the Mediterranean race desmarestii.

We also had opportunities to get great footage of birds such as Swallow, House Martin, Song Thrush and Nightingale.

All these images can be brought to life by downloading the clips themselves from our footage library. You'll then be able to watch the birds in action or view the images frame by frame any time you like.

Video clips of these birds are also available in Version 5 of our CD-ROM guides (The CD-ROM Guide to British Birds and The CD-ROM Guide to All the Birds of Europe).