Hungary Day 7 – A Bonus Day

Sat 11 May 2013

Our last day, and as no planned pre-breakfast birding today, a chance for a bit of a lie-in. Of course Steve still went for his early morning walk, and photographed this golden oriole.

Our return flight was not until 18:55 so there was still plenty of time for some more bird watching before the drive to the airport. After breakfast, and checking-out with the help of Roy, we boarded the minibus for the last time to head off to Szilvásvárad in the Bükki National Park.

We were not allowed to drive the last two or three kilometres to the high, mountain forest spot where we were headed, so we parked up the minibus (a black woodpecker flew across the car park) and purchased tickets for the narrow gauge train ride up the mountain. Lesser whitethroat and pied flycatcher were near the ticket office.

The journey up through the trees took about fifteen minutes in an open railway carriage. On arrival at the top Steve demonstrated his incredible skills at identifying bird song by  announcing that he could hear a collared flycatcher in a tall pine tree (despite have only heard one for the first time earlier in the week). We soon found the bird to confirms Steve’s id.  A grey wagtail was seen beside a stream. Climbing a steep bank we then walked along a forest track hoping to find woodpeckers. Blackcap, wren, great tit, and nuthatch were either seen or heard, but no woodpeckers. The chaffinches here were unusual in that they included an additional “chip” at the end of their song.

Returning back down to the area around the summit station we found a goldcrest (a new species for the week) and I picked up an interesting feather when we were  searching an area where white-backed woodpeckers are know to nest. I uploaded this photo to iSpot in the hope of getting it identified. No positive ids have been received, but buzzard or some sort of owl has been suggested.

While we waited for the train to take us back down we enjoyed watching the collared flycatcher again, and also had buzzard and honey buzzard soaring high above. Having descended a raven was seen circling overhead (the first seen this week, though we had heard one on Friday).

After unsuccessfully looking around for some lunch, we left Szilvásvárad and drove back to Villa Völgy to drop off Brian and Shelagh. After saying our good-byes we journeyed south. On a quiet country road we stopped to find a river warbler that Roy had spotted from the car. I do not think anyone else managed to see it, but was that a lesser grey shrike I spotted as we drove off?

Our final birding was at fishponds near Kisköre at the southern end of Lake Tisza. Purple heron, ferruginous duck, marsh harrier and great reed warbler were good final sightings, but we ended with one more new species – bearded reedling (if you don’t count the one that only Roy glimpsed on Wednesday).

We said our goodbyes to Roy and our fellow birders Peter, Gill, Graham and Ann and piled into the minibus to be driven to Budapest Airport by Lewis, who had taken care of us so well all week.

On the motorway journey we counted many buzzards (upwards of twenty) sat on the roadside fence posts. These caused some debate as they appeared to be smaller than the familiar buzzard and the plumage had a more rufous  colour. We speculated that they might be “Steppe” buzzards (a sub-species of the common buzzard), but this could not be confirmed.

New Species today
Goldcrest	Bearded Reedling

Epilogue

The journey back was long, but uneventful. After a week of sunshine and temperatures of 27 - 30°C, the cold and rain at Heathrow airport was a bit of a shock.

Thank you to Roy Adams and Lewis of Hungarian Bird Tours for looking after us so well and finding us some great birds. And thank you to my fellow birders, David, Steve, Malcolm and Brenda, Peter and Gill, Brian and Shelagh, and Graham and Ann for being such splendid company and making it such a successful and rewarding trip.

Finally, my sincere thanks again to Steve for allowing me to illustrate this blog with his photographs, and to Brian for the use of his black woodpecker photo.

And finally finally, if you haven’t already found the full species list elsewhere in this blog it is here