slim pickings

With Kenya’s incredible biodiversity, it was almost inevitable that our frequent safari trips would turn us onto birding. Moldova, on the other hand, proved a poor posting for this hobby. Fewer than 300 bird species have been recorded in the entire country, and very few of them flock to Chisinau. We have a couple of bird feeders in our yard, but even in spring and summer when our fruit trees flower, we rarely see anything other than the usual house sparrows and great tits.

The Danube delta, on the other hand, is a bird lover’s paradise, with approximately 350 different bird species sighted in the bio-reserve at various times of the year. In the spring, thousands of white pelicans flock from the Nile to the Danube to nest and raise their young. The opportunity to do some bird-watching was one of the prime reasons we wanted to visit the Danube delta.

Unfortunately, we did not have the best of luck with the weather. A brief but fierce storm cancelled all boating excursions our first day, and when we did go out among the reed-lined channels of the delta the next morning, we spent a good part of the two-hour excursion shivering under a cold, light rain. Even so, we had a few good sightings, including a couple of European rollers, a bee-eater, a colorful goldfinch, and several hobby falcons.

Last year we posted quite a few of our birding photos. This post collects the birds we’ve managed to spot in our subsequent European travels.

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Danube Delta, Romania 2015

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Europe, 2014-2015