Bulgaria Day Eight

We started Wednesday June 15th with a visit to the area where the world's Red-breasted Geese population of 50,000 birds spend the winter. Of course these birds were not in and we drove a long a beach, reed beds and a lagoon to the right looking to add birds to our list. Daniel could hear a Paddyfield Warbler over the noisy Reed and Great Read Warblers and we eventually saw one of these birds - a lifer for me - perched up nicely. We also saw some Bearded Reedlings and a pair of Reed Buntings - the local subspecies have larger bills than those in England.

Reed Bunting

After lunch we returned to visit some of the viewing spots across the lake and I added another of my main target birds - Ferruginous Duck - as well as many types of heron.

We took a short time out to enjoy the historic Kaliakra, a peninsular into the Black Sea founded in ancient times and with Roman ruins as well as a fort at the site. We birded from the peninsular but the sea was calm and we didn't really find much of interest other than Pied Wheatears while there.

Late in the day we visited a steppe area along the road back to Kavarna and found all of our targets - Calandra and Short Toed Larks, Tawny Pipit, IsabellineWheatear (lifer) and Stone Curlew.

Calandra Lark

Isabelline Wheatear