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Birdwatching in Bulgaria: tailored trip 8-15 March, day 7

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Today was the day of birds of prey migration. We didn’t start that early but our willingness to go to the vultures’ feeding site by Dadia woke us up at about 7 a.m. We had a brief continental breakfast and off we went.

We were the first customers at Dadia visitors’ centre for the day. They weren’t willing to send the van to the hide straight away so we had to wait for half an hour. In the mean time we logged a couple of birds on the car park. There was a Cirl Bunting and a Syrian Woodpecker. Woodlark was singing out loud.

In 40 min we were in the hide. What a place. Just set the scope and started counting. Two on the top of the rock, three on the other rock and one on the tree. These were all Black Vulture. My friend was really happy to see that many at a time.

Black Vulture by Iordan Hristov

On a tree we had an immature White-tailed Eagle and a Black Vulture. They were pretty identical in size. On a tree nearby there was an immature Greater-spotted Eagle. Later on a juvenile Golden Eagle flied past. Apparently the species is not very regular visitor to the feeding site.

White-tailed Eagle and Black Vulture by Iordan Hristov
White-tailed Eagle and Black Vulture by Iordan Hristov

Soon groups of Black Kites started coming over. They were followed by quite a few Common Buzzards and a couple of Sparrowhawks and Black Storks. Wow, I love migration. We counted a total of over 50 Black Kites, and more than 60 Common Buzzards.

At certain point the feeding site got empty and the migration stopped so we decided to leave. On the way down to the visitors centre we counted a few more Black Kites and a few Steppe Buzzards. Nice male Sardinian Warbler called just before we arrived at the car park.

It was time to go. We had a long way to go to Sofia which is about 5 hours drive from Dadia so we headed home. This was the end of a great one week journey. I shall write another post with a summary and a checklist of all the birds we saw which are over 150 species I assume.

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