Limosa - Birdwatching and Wildlife Hoildays Worldwide

Corncrake on the hotel balcony... Lesser Spotted Eagles all but brushing our noses with their wing-tips right outside the bedrooms... a party of Black Storks passing by at eye level as we breakfast in the restaurant... a male Pallid Harrier ghosting in from the sea at extremely close range... ‘falls’ of Golden Orioles, Red-breasted Flycatchers and Icterine Warblers... a flock of 1200 roosting White Pelicans... up to twenty different species of birds of prey. These are just some of the highlights from our previous autumn tours to Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast.

The annual migration of tens of thousands of birds of prey and storks across the Bosphorus at Istanbul, in neighbouring Turkey, has long been famous as one of the great European bird spectaculars. But the fact that the majority of these birds - plus countless thousands of storks, pelicans, herons and other migrants - must first travel south through coastal Bulgaria was inexplicably overlooked by travelling birdwatchers until as recently as the late-1990s.

As with migration anywhere, the make up and number of birds moving can vary enormously from day to day, but our tours are timed to run over the period when the spectacle of autumn migration along this ‘secret flyway’ is usually at its peak. And with direct flights now available to Varna on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast, we should arrive right in the thick of the action.

By happy coincidence, some of Europe’s most important wetlands are also to be found nearby. The coastal saltpans, freshwater lakes and reed-beds hold an impressive array of specialities, with White and Dalmatian Pelicans, Pygmy Cormorant, Little Crake, Broad-billed and Marsh Sandpipers, Bluethroat and Penduline Tit among those we’ve seen before.

To the north, the limestone steppe of Cape Kaliakra and open bushy country at Cape Emine are attractive to migrant wheatears, warblers, flycatchers and shrikes. Being so little visited we have good chances here of finding something really special ourselves. Eagle Owls stole the show last year, and the forests just inland of the coast are outstanding for woodpeckers.

We first ‘discovered’ Bulgaria in 1996 and our groups have been returning annually ever since. Our 2011 tour will be Limosa’s twenty-fourth visit to Bulgaria, when we shall be accompanied as usual by an experienced local birdwatching guide. Why not join us for an exciting week, revelling in the annual movement of birds of prey, pelicans, storks and innumerable passerine migrants that stream south along Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast every autumn? The prospect is irresistible!