Working weekend

Weekend was a bit strange. It was meant to be a  working weekend but It wasn’t. I wanted to just go somewhere and have a relaxed weekend in front of the computer. Well see the photos and guess if I did it 🙂

There was no internet, or at least no proper one. I meant to select to hotel on the basis of the internet connection and I thought I had but… no. The internet connection was total crap. I did do some work on one of the days but the next one was devoted to walking and photography which I miss a lot lately. Well managed to do a few shots that keep me busy post-processing for a little while.

On Friday afternoon we traveled to a village called Ravnogor. Lovely little place in the middle of Western Rhodope mountains. Open space surrounded by conifer trees. This is what the area is like. So after the first day we did take an afternoon walk which was fairly quiet but produced a nice untypical White Stork standing on top of a conifer tree:

There we lots of Red-backed Shrikes, a single Crested Tit, a couple of Marsh Tits, Ravens and Great spotted Woodpeckers.

Before lunch on the next day we walked in the area to a place called “Chervenata skala” (the Red Rock). Fantastic view to a valley overlooking one of the reservoirs in the area called Vacha reservoir. What a view. Totally recommended. Whinchats and juvenile Kestrels were all over the place.

 Common KestrelAfter a nice musaka for lunch we took off to a place where a Demoiselle Crane was seen couple of days ago. This sounds like a bit of a twitch but it was not. Well, we weren’t shaking 😉 I just wanted to show the bird to my girlfriend who sounded quite excited by the look of it :). The place is in the planes of Plovdiv. Wanted to feel at home, the crane was seen in the local rice fields. Soon we were in the area. We checked a few pools but the bird was not there. It was steeming with birds. Gulls, Waders, Wagtails, Herons but no crane.

I spent some time photographing the Black-winged Stilts but for now this is the only shot that makes sense.