Sunday, 7 September 2025

Bulgaria, September 2025, Day Three

As usual we started off at the plot doing the moths and then after that we went on an Eagle Owl hunt. Dimiter and his group went to Balchik and we went to Bolata Gorge. Dimiter found two birds at his site so after a quick search of Bolata we went over to Balchik to twitch one of his birds. 

As we were in Balchik we decided to do an hour or so at the raptor viewpoint despite the unfavourable wind. Not a lot was going on - a couple of Lesser Spotted Eagles, a Short-toed Eagle and a couple of Montagu's Harriers were the highlights.

We then stopped off for a proper coffee at Kavarna (and picked up Pallid Swift) and then visited a staging site for Stone Curlews- 16 of them in a flock! 

After a break during the heat of the day we spent the evening around the village and the wood. The rather strong wind did us a favour and concentrated birds on the south side of the wood. We had a surprising five species of woodpecker in the wood- Lesser, Middle and Great Spotted, Green and Syrian. Also good numbers of Red breasted Flys, a few Spotted Flys and a nice showy juv Hobby with a juv Montagu's Harrier hawking over the nearby fields. Full list HERE

Live trip report HERE - just over 100 species yet which indicates how slow going it is- although a bad few days here are still pretty darn good!

Middle Spotted Woodpecker (above and below)- a first for the project Ebird hotspot

Stone Curlew
Whinchat- one of two near the wood, surprisingly the first ones of the trip.
Juv Night Heron at Bolata
The daily Red-breasted Fly pic- they are literally everywhere as usual
Willow Warbler- a few around and finally had our first Chiffchaff of the trip
Spot the Eagle Owl 

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