2011 Tour Narrative
A new beginning to the tour this year was an internal flight to Suceava and a hotel bed instead of the usual overnight sleeper train after a visit to Caldurasani monastery, a tour of Bucharest, and dinner at Dracula’s Club. So one of our first Romanian birds was a top-target species of Bucovina – Spotted Nutcracker – quickly followed by a second - Crested Tit - on Obcine Mare ridge which provided an exhilarating walk. Breathtaking views of mountain ranges, forested hills, and mist-filled valleys graded, Japanese-print style, into a blue-grey infinity. But it was a lower elevation woodland walk which gave us, on successive days, the biggest surprises of the trip: first, that almost mythical grey ghost of Carpathian forests the Ural Owl, and then, equally beyond belief, that other rarely-seen denizen of these woods the Hazel Grouse! These were both write-ins for this tour and may prove a hard act to follow next year. Other species in this mountain habitat ranged from Dipper and Grey-headed Woodpecker, to Goshawk and Honey Buzzard and (of particular interest to our American participants) Robin, Wren, Goldcrest, Treecreeper, Marsh Tit, and Willow Tit. Equally impressive were the painted monasteries of Sucovita and Moldovita and the prize-winning egg-craft of Gliceria Hre?iuc.
Moving through the hay-heaped fields south of Bucovina’s beach and pine forests gave more monasteries: Humor, Veronet, Neamt, and Agapia, and we enjoyed Red-backed and Great Grey Shrikes, Lesser Spotted Eagle, meadows flowering with Yellow Wagtails, Whinchat, Fieldfares, and most spectacularly a flock of migrating White Storks stretching as far as the eye could see both horizontally and vertically. We estimated this conservatively at a minimum of ten thousand birds. A single Black Stork photographed in a roadside stream from our vehicle had to make up in quality what it lacked in quantity. Bee-eaters, Rollers, and the first Golden Oriole began to provide roadside colour, and Great Grey gave way to Lesser Grey Shrikes.
Then came our Danube Delta experience. We certainly lucked out with our ponton and salupa crew, and the meals were outstanding. Stuffed pike was merely the starter to one dinner which included wild boar and home-made ice cream and fruit. And the soups were complete meals in themselves. Gliding silently through the old channels (or when necessary accelerating swiftly to another key destination) was a relaxing and rewarding experience which provided a constant change of cast in a non-stop cabaret of star turns and crowd spectacle - over a hundred species each day involving tens of thousands of birds. Highlights were hundreds of Pygmy Cormorants, four thousand White Pelicans plus just seven Dalmatians, Little Bitterns, Purple Herons, Glossy Ibis, Spoonbills, thousands of Ferruginous Ducks, White-tailed Eagles, Osprey, Hobbies galore, twenty Kingfishers, Lesser Spotted and Black Woodpeckers, and the occasional Passerine extra such as Spotted Flycatcher, Redstart, and Great Reed Warbler.
Back on dry land, the final days of our adventure were by no means an anticlimax, and, amazingly even at this late stage, over forty new birds were added to our trip list. The attractive orchard and woodland beyond Celic Dere monastery yielded instant Sombre Tit, overhead Hawfinches and Booted Eagle, and the most obliging Syrian and Middle Spotted Woodpeckers of the trip. The Cheia Dobrogea gorge circuit provided Isabelline and Eastern Black-eared Wheatears, Montagu’s Harriers, Long-legged Buzzards, a dramatic Saker, and a flock of two-hundred Calandra Larks (another write-in). And the pools along the Black Sea coast, thanks to an east wind and an overnight thunderstorm and rain, held an overwhelming selection of waders including Black-winged Stilt, Avocet, Little Ringed and Kentish Plovers, European Golden Plover, Little and Temminck’s Stints, Broad-billed, Marsh, Terek, and Curlew Sandpipers, and Red-necked Phalaropes. In the skies above flocks of Red-footed Falcons and Levant Sparrowhawks, plus three-hundred Mediterranean Gulls, performed for our delight. And even our history interlude at Histria added Collared Pratincoles and our first Red-breasted Flycatcher (although this was to be gazumped the following day by an unprecedented migrating flock of twenty).
A fitting finale to our birds-and-monasteries combination came en route to Bucharest airport, when at Caldurasane monastery, thirteen Long-eared Owls gazed down at us whilst the sonorous singing of the Sunday service provided an appropriately celebratory thanksgiving. – Bryan Bland
Updated: February 2012