Tag: Ural Owl

Our most comprehensive tour doing a large loop starting from Budapest and reaching the Transylvania’s Hargitha region in Romania in mid May again managed to score on all 10 woodpeckers possible on the itinerary and seeing almost all birds on the way to finally come to a tour total of 227 birds recorded during 11 days birding.

As usual the highlights were not only the woodpeckers but the regional specialties such as Saker Falcon, Eastern Imperial Eagle, Lesser Spotted Eagle, Red-footed Falcon to name the best raptors, Eurasian Pygmy Owl, Ural Owl, Eurasian Eagle-Owl all seen during the day, European Roller, Wallcreeper, Sombre Tit, Moustached Warbler and a lot more all enjoyed through fantastic landscape while local cuisine was keeping us in shape.

We finished our annual GT the first time excluding Slovakia from the itinerary, thus being one day shorter and visiting Hungary and Transylvania (Romania) only during the tour.
Our expectations were exceeded as we managed to record more species during the tour as on any previous one and broke the ‘record’ standing for 10 years as we managed to put down 234 bird species on our list.

Luckily all major highlights were seen, including 10 woodpecker and 9 owl species with the tricky Three-toed Woodpecker, the scarce White-backed Woodpecker included as well as the sought-after Ural Owl and Tengmalm’s Owl.
We birded the lowlands in Hungary with great wetlands giving us such great birds as Broad-billed Sandpiper and Great Snipe, while reaching higher altitude zones in the Carpathian Mountains in Romania where we saw Western Capercaillie, Eurasian Pygmy Owl and ‘Carpathian’ Brown Bears. The most scenic parts in Transylvania were the Békás Gorge where Wallcreeper was a dream bird for many of us to see and the Torockó Valley which held some trickier to see species like Sombre Tit and Common Rock Thrush.

Click here for the report of the tour with all the details and images give a concise reading what happened in 11 days of birding in Central Europe.