2007 Tour Narrative
“Once more our Hortobagy-Transylvania pairing proved to be the perfect sandwich albeit one with no bread either side: just three layers of filling.
Our first 24 hours in Hungary provided the by-now traditional combination of quantity and quality – over a hundred species including several on the IUCN Red List and six of world conservation importance: Lesser White-fronted Goose, Eastern Imperial Eagle, and Great Bustard (all globally threatened species), plus Pygmy Cormorant, Ferruginous Duck, and White-tailed Eagle (all ‘near threatened’). The equally-impressive supporting cast ranged throughout the whole spectrum of both non-passerines and passerines, from Great Bittern to Corn Bunting and including Eurasian Spoonbill, Common Shelduck, Garganey, Pallid Harrier, Saker, Crane, Avocet, Stone Curlew, a trip of 22 Dotterel, Little Stint, Spotted Redshank, Whiskered Tern, Little Owl, Kingfisher, Red-throated Pipit, Bearded Tit, Eurasian Penduline Tit, and Great Grey Shrike. It would be difficult to imagine a better day’s birding anywhere in Europe.
Even so, our traveling day which followed added 17 new species: Little, Great Crested, and Red-necked Grebes, Little Egret, Black Stork, Tufted Duck, Sparrowhawk, Greenshank, Common Sandpiper, Ruddy Turnstone (a rarity so far from the coast), Common Gull, Syrian Woodpecker, white-headed Long-tailed Tit, Marsh Tit, Nuthatch, Greenfinch, and Hawfinch. And our arrival at our destination in Transylvania, as in all the best stories and films, coincided with a full moon.
Our first walk in Transylvania yielded a classic high-altitude coniferous-forest selection: Goshawk, Three-toed Woodpecker, (satisfying ‘scope views), close comparisons of Goldcrest and Firecrest and Marsh and Willow Tits, Crested Tit, Coal Tit, Common Treecreeper, Nutcracker (both in flight and perched), Siskin,. Crossbill, a pair of obliging Bullfinches beside the track, and over a hundred Hawfinches – plus Water Pipits and Grey Wagtails on the mountain top. We went to bed happy and content as the day closed with views of a magnificent tawny-shouldered European Brown Bear.
Memorable images from the following day included a singing Ring Ouzel perched like the fairy on a Christmas Tree and a Dipper posing on a mid stream rock with a Fire Salamander at its feet. But bird of the day (indeed voted bird of the trip, only two points short of the possible maximum) was a Wallcreeper - more butterfly than bird (and understandably known in China as the ‘rock flower’) - which semaphored close and continuous until we eventually walked away.
Another full moon later saw us back in the coniferous forest at 5000 feet with a picnic breakfast and lunch in the hotel was followed by a visit to Szentpàli fishponds (another Great Bittern plus Hobby and Purple Heron which were new for us) and to Kaloda beech forest and meadows (Woodlarks, Green Woodpeckers, and Fieldfares).
Then came atmospheric Sighisoara with its film-set main square, romantic castle and clock tower, and photogenic old houses which still looks largely as it did when Dracula lived there in the fifteenth century. Equally photogenic - and equally evocative of life in times gone by - were the houses in the UNESCO World Heritage Village of Torocko, some of which housed us for our final night in Transylvania. Coinciding with their annual festival, we were able to enjoy not only the usual home-cooked produce and local brandies but also optional music and dancing well into the night. Others preferred to dream of the day’s birding highlights - Rock Buntings, and another Woodlark, Peregrine and pole-dancing Green Woodpeckers, one of which narrowly missed being grabbed by a Goshawk just yards in front of us.
Back in the Hortobagy, our tight schedule worked to perfection: almost instant Middle Spotted Woodpeckers and Short-toed Treecreepers in Debrecen great wood; thirty Long-eared Owls in Balmazújváros town centre and Wood Sandpiper at the sewage farm; and Long-legged Buzzard and Northern Wheatear at Szeg - leaving us time to drive out over Cserepes puszta to await in absolute silence the evening flight of the Lesser Whitefronts from the fishponds to a grazing area. On cue they came - a flock of fifty with four more following (half the European population of Europe’s rarest breeding bird). Carefully we stalked and ‘scoped until we were close enough to see not only the curving white on their baby-face profiles but also the yellow orbital rings around their eyes. A magical moment with the silence now broken by the thrilling bugling of endless lines of Cranes strung out above us.
This alone would have made a sufficient grand finale. But our final morning was no anticlimax. A return visit to the Hortobagy fishpond where we began presented us not only with a welcome reprise of a range of species from Spoonbill to Bearded Tit (over a hundred of them and feeding on the path just yards ahead of us) but also a White Pelican (a new bird for Bryan’s Hungary list and only the second for Zoltan) and the first Tundra Bean Goose of the winter flying in to join thousands of Greylags and a smaller flock of Lesser Whitethroats in the bright morning sunlight. A wonderful finish.
A significant feature of this year’s trip was our amazing luck with the weather - dry sunny days which enabled us to drive to many localities inaccessible in wet conditions (despite the four days of continuous rain in the Hortobagy between our two visits). This, and the coincidence of the full moon, gave us magnificent sunrises and sunsets and thrilling moon views - at times as red as the sun, at others as pale as a primrose. Other bonuses were the fine lunches at Hortobagy czarda (with gypsy cimbalon, violin, and doublebass trio entertaining us) and the Tiszacsege czarda (surely the tastiest fish soup ever), together with the varied evening meals washed down with surprisingly fine wines, local beers, and fruit brandies. Mountains and puszta looked equally photogenic in the clear light and never have the autumn colors looked more splendid.”
Bryan Bland
Updated: October 2007