I flew from Stansted to Sofia on Tuesday June 7th arriving in the evening. Petar met me and took me to the nearby Ibis Hotel. I had breakfast at 6:30 and Daniel arrived at 7:00 for a long first day of the trip, Wednesday 8th,
The weather was not good and we traveled through the rain to the area around Belmeken. Our first good bird was a Eurasian Nutracker as we traveled up to Belmeken Reservoir at 2000 metres above sea level. We then hiked over 10 miles with an elevation change of 500 meters in 40F (5C) to get the days target bird Alpine Accentor. The hike was a good one with lots of mountain specialist sepcies such as Ring Ousel, Tree Pipit, Black Redstart, Whinchat, Water Pipit and breeding Horned Larks to keep us interested. We also saw a European Hare and heard Susliks, communal European ground squirrels calling from the long grass near their burrows. Daniel's tape finally interested our target and I had four different close views of the target bird. On the descent back to the car I had an Adder cross the trail in front of me.
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| Tree Pipit |
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| Whinchat |
We then headed down the mountain past a ski resort stopping to hear Corncrakes calling from long grass along the way ending the day with a drive through the beautiful Trigad Gorge to spend the night at a nice family owned hotel.
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