2007 Tour Narrative
Our Poland Birds and Music tour always centers on the Beethoven Festival in the days before Easter—which is, of course, a movable feast. This year Easter came a critical week earlier, depriving us of some summer migrants. But more than compensating for this were the six extra concerts we managed to attend. This was achieved by arriving in Warsaw on a Saturday, giving us the opportunity to attend three concerts on our first full day (in addition to the Saturday evening concert performance of Verdi’s Otello), and by restructuring our Kraków days to give us three very contrasting musical evenings there, too—plus more time exploring the Carpathians on the Slovakian border.
The Beethoven, needless to say, was superb: six string quartets, five piano sonatas, piano concertos, piano trios, variations for piano and cello, and a stirring performance of the eighth symphony. But so too were the Berlioz “Damnation of Faust,” Wagner’s Valkyrie, Mahler’s ninth, the Liszt “Years of Pilgrimage,” the Szymanowski songs, Richard Strauss’s “A Hero’s Life” and “Don Juan,” and the Frank Martin and Schönberg—all performed in the splendid acoustics of the Warsaw Philharmonic Concert Hall or Chamber Hall, the Polish National Opera House, or the Grand Hall of the Royal Castle.
In Kraków, too, the settings perfectly complemented the music: Vivaldi, Handel, Bach, Corelli, and Mozart in the glitter and baroque splendor of St. Bernard’s Church; Chopin, Listz, and Schumann in the most beautiful chamber in Poland (decorated with baroque stucco by Baltazar Fontana in the 17th century); and Jewish klezmer music in the 19th-century décor of the celebrated Klezmer Hois (where Spielberg stayed when making Schindler’s List). In the intervening days our musical fare ranged from a private concert by a wonderful piano quartet in Lutoslawski’s manor to the sonorous and mesmerizing singing of the Russian choir in Hajnówki Orthodox Church on the Belarus border at their Easter Day service (which happily this year coincided with ours).
Our selection of birds was equally wide-ranging. For the second year running our bird list was launched on Day 1 with a Peregrine that flew over our minibus as we left the hotel. The Warsaw city parks then added a variety of delights, from exotic Mandarins and Peacocks to more real woodpeckers (Lesser, Middle, and Great Spotted, plus two edge-of-range Syrians), Fieldfares, Jays, and Goosanders. Chopin’s birthplace gave us our first Black Woodpeckers, Firecrest, Blackcap, and Cranes, and our only Kingfisher. Lutoslawski’s manor gave us a very close pair of Black Woodpeckers at a nest hole. And between concerts in Warsaw we saw White-tailed Eagle, Bewick’s Swan, White Stork, Black-necked Grebe, Garganey and Goldeneye, Green Woodpecker, Marsh and Willow Tits, Woodlark, and Hawfinch. In the Biebrza marshes we were welcomed by thousands of White-fronted Geese, plus Bean Geese, Whooper Swans, and both Lesser Spotted and Greater Spotted Eagles. Red-necked Grebes were also a highlight in this area.
The Bialowieza forest seemed to be full of Bramblings and Redwings, but our traditional Easter Day trio of Three-toed and White-backed Woodpeckers and Hazel Hen gave us only the briefest of glimpses this year, though a Gray-headed Woodpecker was particularly obliging, as were numerous Great Spotted and occasional Lesser and Middle Spotted and a pair of Black Woodpeckers, plus both Marsh and Willow Tits. The much-desired Crested Tit failed to show itself, but this was put into perspective a few days later when at the edge of Podczerwome peat-bog near the Slovakian border a particularly energetic and charismatic individual put on such a show a few feet in front of our eyes that it was voted Bird of the Trip. Other specialties at the same location included an equally close Firecrest, our only Great Gray Shrike, three Black Storks, and twenty-one Black Grouse (the most we have ever seen there), plus Dippers and Gray Wagtails just a few miles away. Runners-up were an equally obliging pair of Penduline Tits at Spytkowice fishponds (another species which had eluded us earlier), where Great Egrets, Marsh Harriers, Night Herons, Ruffs, Temminck’s Stints, Wood and Green Sandpipers, Black-tailed Godwits, a proliferation of grebes, and the first Yellow Wagtail of the year also competed for our attention.
In addition to the birds and the music, we visited many beautiful and historic buildings and some magnificent natural habitats with cloudless blue skies setting off vast vistas of marsh and reedbed; pure white blossoms cumulus-clouded the hedgerows and ancient woodland was carpeted with blue hepatica and pink anenomes. But the most memorable aspect of the trip was when during our pre-breakfast walk on Easter Day, large snowflakes began to fall, and by the following morning the core area of the Bialowieza forest was deep in snow and even more mysteriously silent than usual—a rare and magical experience, and a contrast with the eventual arrival of summer (and a temperature of 75ºF) on the day we left.
- Bryan Bland
Updated: September 2008