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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

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  1. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Thanks, Mike. As you will have realised, I was quite taken with Bulgaria. Next time I'd like to take in more of the history & antiquities of the country with a visit to the historic city of Plovdiv being high on my list. It's also a top country for seeing Brown Bears ...
  2. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Thanks. It wasn't me who did well to get the Rock Partridge but the guide! We were there shortly after dawn and the guide, Dimiter, heard it calling as we emerged from the van and almost as quickly spotted it at the top of the cliff. Dimiter suggested we scramble up the scree slope for a...
  3. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    I recognised the Black-veined White but thanks for the skipper ID
  4. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Thank you, Paul, for your kind comment. As you wrote until you've been there it's hard to imagine anywhere with so many shrikes!
  5. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Apologies for the delay in getting back to you. I confess I wrote down the name & posted my account without checking it in the herps field guide. Apparently, it's often regarded as a race of Smooth Newt (Lissotriton vulgaris schmidtleri) although the field guide does note that it may be a full...
  6. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    It was and you should visit!
  7. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Summary Apparently, in Medieval times Bulgaria was a byword for a far-off & mysterious country about which few knew anything at all. I'm not sure things have greatly improved since as I doubt that it's "on the radar" for nearly as many people as it should be. I confess that if I hadn’t...
  8. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Sunday 11th June My last (half) day birding in Bulgaria. It was about two hours from Sandanski to Aldomirovsti Marsh (our final birding destination) just north of Sofia. En route, we briefly stopped in the Kresna Gorge - an impressive place but we saw little more than very distant Blue...
  9. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Day 13 - Saturday 10th June My last full day birding in Bulgaria. Our first stop today was about 20 km north of Sandanski where the railway line crosses just beyond Dolna Gradeshnitsa. A track here took us up to a small sandpit with a thriving Bee-eater colony, but the target was Rock Sparrow...
  10. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Day 12 - Friday 9th June Rising around dawn, we headed north from Sofia for about an hour to Dobravitsa (near Breze in the Ponor mountains). Our early start was to maximise chances of seeing Rock Partridge at a remote massive rock wall (Stolo Rock Formation). It paid off as no sooner had we...
  11. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    A Historical & Cultural Interlude (or once a History teacher ...) With such a deep and varied history stretching back to the ancient Thracians, I expected every town and village in Bulgaria to be littered with evidence of its ancient and medieval past. Although there were interesting classical...
  12. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Many thanks - I realised Dimitar had spoken to someone, but didn't know who.
  13. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Interesting to hear that the Rhodopes have a distinct dialect. Are the fruits of your wife's research available anywhere?
  14. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Day 11 - Thursday 8th June The original plan was to stay in Kavarna for another night but to optimise my chances of seeing my last two lifers and some more 'century birds', instead, we drove across the country to Sofia via Veliko Tarnovo and Boatin Nature Reserve (near Divchovoto), a marathon...
  15. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    I forgot to mention that I got a lifer and even got a smudged photo of it on Cape Kaliakra on Wednesday. It wasn't a bird, an insect, herp, a mammal or even a flower ... it was an aircraft! It was a Soviet built Sukhoi Su-25 Grach (aka Frogfoot) ground attack aircraft designed in the '70s. How...
  16. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Yours is an older version that includes sites in Greece. The new guide focuses entirely on the Bulgarian Rhodope Mountains so has been extensively rewritten and edited accordingly.
  17. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Day 10 - Wednesday 7th June From Kavarna it’s only about 15 minutes to Cape Kaliakra, a headland that projects southwards for c2 km into the Black Sea. At its base, it’s about 1.5 km wide but quickly narrows so that the final 800m is only c100m wide. Access to the habitat - mainly open grassy...
  18. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Day 9 - Tuesday 6th June Today we were moving from Burgas to our next base, Karvana which is about three hours away by the most direct route ... but being after birds we weren't taking a direct route! We had several detours into woodlands looking for Semi-collared Flycatcher, the ever-elusive...
  19. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Me too, that's why I added them! I missed out a few so I've gone back and edited my original post to include a few more shots.
  20. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Day 8 - Monday 5th June Back to the birds ... Although I missed my companions as the only client the good news was the following week could be 'tweaked' to cater for my particular wants. I still had two lifers to see Rock Partridge and Rock Nuthatch (and a few 'century ticks') The first I...
  21. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    A Scenic Interlude I confess I had little idea what Bulgaria was like scenically until I started checking routes for the Crossbill Guide via Google Streetview which suggested it was a country with a varied scenery with craggy mountain tops, deep ravines, alpine meadows, wooded hills (deciduous...
  22. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    I'm John, Peter was the helpful chap with working ears and sharper eyesight!
  23. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Of course, Peter wasn't the only friend I made on this trip. More to follow anon!
  24. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Day 7 - Sunday 4th June I enjoyed a brilliant start to the day in Burgas when I took a pre-breakfast breather on my hotel room’s balcony. Almost immediately, I noticed a distant falcon purposefully heading my way. I had expected a Peregrine or perhaps a Hobby but one look through my binoculars...
  25. John Cantelo

    Birding Bulgaria - Two weeks in the Balkans

    Knowing that doesn't make it any easier! Our guide (a young chap called Dimitar rather than Dimiter) told us that the birds were atypically tricky this year but whether that means you were lucky or we were unlucky I'm not so sure! Perhaps the difference was that the young had fledged by the...
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