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ROMANIA<br />
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ROMANIA<br />
ROMANIA<br />
It’s a case of ‘the birds and the bears’ in this rich and varied<br />
eastern European wildlife haven<br />
WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHS: MIKE WEEDON<br />
E<br />
uropean birdwatching trips are<br />
not really supposed to be like<br />
this. One day, you are watching<br />
a Ural Owl and Chamois in the<br />
morning, a dozen close-up Brown Bears<br />
in the evening. And a couple of days later<br />
drifting along by a floating Whiskered<br />
Tern colony, with White and Dalmatian<br />
Pelicans overhead, enjoying more<br />
Squacco Herons than you can imagine.<br />
And, moored up at night, the frog and<br />
toad chorus is so loud that you can barely<br />
dream, let alone sleep.<br />
But Romania presents a different kind<br />
of European birding, offering several<br />
different worlds within its borders.<br />
I was there in June, accompanying a<br />
group from the Ramblers Worldwide<br />
Holidays. The trip was split between<br />
exploring the Carpathians and Dracula<br />
country in Transylvania; the steppe; and<br />
five nights sleeping on a ‘floating hotel’<br />
in the mind-blowing Danube Delta.<br />
The bears were the highlight of the<br />
first couple of days of the trip, in the<br />
Carpathians. We visited a little hide and<br />
watched the<br />
glorious mammals<br />
emerging from the<br />
forest to come to<br />
biscuit bait. Brown<br />
Bears are nervous<br />
and sensitive to<br />
each other’s<br />
positions and<br />
movements.<br />
A sneaky Fox,<br />
which came in to<br />
pinch some biscuits,<br />
set the younger<br />
bears and females<br />
on edge. But not as<br />
Male Brown Bear<br />
much as the appearance of a big brute of<br />
a male, massive and muscular, and<br />
already mostly in his short summer coat.<br />
One of the females flirted with him,<br />
outrageously, leading him into the forest.<br />
But the highlights, for me, of the whole<br />
bear-watching experience included<br />
hearing the blood-curdling, instinctjarring<br />
roars of nearby bears in the<br />
forest. That and the all-too-brief<br />
appearance of a mother with two tiny<br />
cubs which almost looked like they<br />
wanted to come and explore in the back<br />
of our (open-doored) hide.<br />
Delta drifting<br />
The core of the whole trip was cruising<br />
the myriad water ways of the Danube<br />
Delta. There are 3,446 square km of this<br />
incredible delta system in Romania.<br />
Channels take you through subtly<br />
different vegetation systems and forest<br />
types. There are vast floating reedbeds,<br />
damp forests, dunes, lagoons, and richly<br />
vegetated banks. And there are masses of<br />
birds, everywhere!<br />
The excitement started when we first<br />
boarded our floating hotel at Tulcea, the<br />
gateway to the delta. House Sparrows, of<br />
all the exotic birds you could choose,<br />
were sweeping majestically over the<br />
water by our boat and catching giant<br />
yellow Tisza Mayflies (Europe’s biggest<br />
mayfly). We even got excited by our first<br />
passing Whiskered Terns. I say ‘even’ not<br />
because Whiskered Terns are anything<br />
other than fantastic birds, but because we<br />
were to see thousands of them over the<br />
next few days in<br />
the delta. I love<br />
Whiskered Terns,<br />
but they are so<br />
common there<br />
that, when a<br />
couple of (for us,<br />
more familiar)<br />
Black Terns<br />
White Pelicans are<br />
more numerous than<br />
Dalmatian Pelicans in<br />
the Danube Delta<br />
joined one feeding flock, these grabbed<br />
all the attention.<br />
The Danube Delta is a massive source<br />
of food for a great variety of birds. There<br />
are feeding herons everywhere, with<br />
different tracts attracting Night Herons,<br />
Squacco Herons, Purple Herons and Little<br />
and Great White Egrets, Pygmy<br />
Cormorants and Cormorants, and of<br />
course White, and a lesser number of,<br />
Dalmatian Pelicans.<br />
But above the water, there were great<br />
riches, too. Never have I known such<br />
numbers of Cuckoos. There is a constant<br />
accompaniment of the males’ song and<br />
occasional females’ ‘bubbling’ calls.<br />
There are Icterine and Eastern<br />
Olivaceous Warblers warbling, Golden<br />
The landscape<br />
of the<br />
Carpathians is<br />
truly beautiful<br />
18 World Birding 2016