We woke up in the middle of oak woodland with slight rain. Everybody in the group was keen to walk around the new type of habitat so the rain didn’t scare the participants. Even more, some of them had already walked before the time for our meeting and had already seen a Lesser spotted Woodpecker and a Cirl Bunting. After a bite of lovely chocolate we headed towards the woods.
It wasn’t even a 100 m from the hotel when a Middle spotted Woodpecker turned up right next to his Lesser brother. The first came pretty close and everyone enjoyed it. Another 100 m further away we heard a familiar call. Black Woodpecker’s head popped up from a nesting hole. In a couple of minutes the bird took off for everyone’s joy of seeing the whole bird. People in the group really wanted to see it. Another 50 m away a Woodlark called, then the highlight and main reason for selecting this place: a Semi-collared flycatcher! Lovely male was nicely singing.
The walk in the woodland continued with more rain, more Semi-collared Flycatcatchers, Hoopoe, Wood Warbler, Short-toed Treecreeper, an early family of Long-tailed Tits and a couple of Hawfinches. A Grey-headed, Great spotted and Green Woodpecker made it a total of 6 woodpecker species that we had for about an hour and a half before breakfast.
After breakfast it was time to change the habitat. It was time for some waterbirds and we drove to Bourgas. It seems that everyone enjoyed this change. We stopped by a wetland and everyone started shouting out different species names. Some of the highlights were Teminck’s Stint, Glossy Ibis, Purple Heron, White-tailed Eagle, more than 20 Red-footed Falcons, Marsh Sandpiper, Ferruginous Duck, Garganey, White Pelicans, Red-crested Pochard, at least 5 Broad-billed Sandpipers, etc. It was a day of about 120 species which takes us to nearly 190 species for the trip so far. Nor too bad is it?