Day 1: The tour begins this evening at Bucharest airport. Once everyone has gathered, we’ll check in for our internal flight to Suceava. From Suceava’s airport we’ll drive directly to the Sucevita Valley, where we’ll spend the next three nights. We’ll be based in a very comfortable family-run chalet beside steep, flower-filled hay meadows on the edge of primary forest. Grey-headed and Black Woodpeckers, Fieldfare, and Dipper are present here, and we might even see Spotted Nutcracker from our bedroom windows. Night in Sucevita.

Day 2: This morning we’ll explore one of the many forested valleys, and later in the day we’ll visit the fortified monastery in the village. As Sacheverell Sitwell, visiting in the 1920s, wrote: “This first view of the painted church of Sucevita is among the most impressive revelations of the whole Byzantine world.” In the cool of the late afternoon we’ll search for Red-breasted Flycatcher, various woodpeckers, and other woodland birds in the surrounding forest. Night in Sucevita.

Day 3: Pre-breakfast birding around our hotel could produce six species of tit, Hawfinch, and Grey Wagtail. Later we’ll drive up to a wooded pass at 4000 feet in search of Collared Flycatcher, Crossbill, Crested Tit, and maybe even Hazel Grouse and White-backed Woodpecker. If conditions are favorable, a raptor viewpoint on the edge of the forest will give us a good chance of seeing Montagu’s Harrier, Honey Buzzard, Lesser Spotted and Booted Eagles, and Goshawk. We’ll continue to Moldovita Monastery, remarkable for its eyewitness battle scene of the Turkish siege of Suceava Fortress. After a picnic lunch we’ll explore a second tributary valley leading from Sucevita. Night in Sucevita.

Day 4: Once we leave Sucevita, we’ll have the option of visiting two more 16th-century painted monasteries—Voronet and Humor—but en route we’ll make many birding stops for a range of species, from Red-footed Falcon and Lesser Spotted Eagle to Whinchat and Great Grey and Red-backed Shrikes. In the afternoon we’ll reach Neamt Monastery. Built in the 12th century and the oldest monastery in Moldavia, it resembles a fortress with high stone walls. The orchard nearby is a good spot for woodpeckers (Black, Green, Grey-headed, Great Spotted, Lesser, and Syrian). We’ll spend the night at a charming guesthouse that usually has Serin and Tree Sparrow on its the grounds. Night in Agapia.

Day 5: After breakfast we’ll visit the nearby Agapia Monastery. Built in the 17th century, its outer plain whitewashed walls belie the splendor to be found inside. Nicolae Grigorescu, the country’s foremost painter, stayed at Agapia for two years and painted the interior frescoes, a visual feast of rich and colorful images. Later in the day we’ll continue our journey southeast toward the Danube Delta. As we travel through the rolling medieval strip fields of Moldavia, we may see roadside Short-toed and Booted Eagles, Crested Lark, Roller, Bee-eater, and Golden Oriole. At Tulcea we’ll board our private houseboat in time for dinner, with an evening cruise to a convenient mooring spot. With luck we’ll see the first of the usual delta species as flocks of Glossy Ibis and Night Herons fly to and from their roosts. Night on the houseboat.

Days 6–7: Our next two days will be spent exploring the heart of the delta. The exact locations we’ll visit will depend on the water levels at the time but are likely to include large areas of freshwater surrounded by reedbeds hosting thousands of Ferruginous Ducks and perhaps White (and the occasional Dalmatian) Pelicans. Little Egrets and Whiskered Terns will be almost constant companions. Squacco, Night, and Purple Herons are abundant, and we’ll see the occasional Little Bittern. Marsh Harriers will be frequent, while White-tailed Eagle, though less common, is likely. We should also see Red-necked and Black-necked Grebes, together with good numbers of waterfowl and Pygmy Cormorants. In the stands of willow and poplar that grow above the reeds and along the banks we can expect to find Hobby, Roller, Hoopoe, Penduline Tit, Kingfisher, and much more, while any muddy edge may hold Little or Spotted Crake.

The pleasure of relaxing under the canopy of the observation deck, sipping endless tea or coffee (or even the occasional beer or soft drink) and gliding past a succession of exciting birds, cannot be overemphasized. Nights on the houseboat.

Day 8: We’ll drive a short distance from Tulcea to Celic Dere Monastery (a good site for Sombre Tit and Syrian and Middle Spotted Woodpeckers), then south to Enisala and across the Gura Dobrogea plateau looking for larks, Tawny Pipit, and Isabelline Wheatear continuing to the gorge at Cheia Dobrogea. This is a fine area of rocky steppe adjoining oak forest. Pied and Eastern Black-eared Wheatears breed here, and other species in the area could include Levant Sparrowhawk, Booted and Imperial Eagles, Little Owl, and three harrier species (Hen, Pallid, and Montagu’s). We’ll drive to Vadu, where we’ll spend the night at a peaceful guesthouse with excellent home cooking. Night in Vadu.

Day 9: A pre-breakfast visit to the oil refinery pools has in past years provided an assortment of rare waders (Broad-billed, Marsh, and Terek Sandpipers) plus Spotted Redshanks, Curlew Sandpipers, and Paddyfield Warblers and Bearded Tits in the reedbed. The pools at Vadu could hold Red-necked Phalarope, Temminck’s Stint, and Collared Pratincole while the beach (an excellent spot for a swim in the Black Sea) usually has good numbers of Kentish Plover and Sanderling. We’ll then explore the coast around Histria and its reserve on Grindul Saele adjoining Lake Sinoie. Both species of pelican, Spoonbill, Spotted Crake, Short-toed Lark, and Paddyfield Warbler are all possible here. Histria is also the oldest settlement in Romania, inhabited for 1300 years, and we’ll spend some time at the ruins and excellent museum there. Night in Vadu.

Day 10: After some birdwatching at the oil refinery pools we’ll return to Bucharest airport where the tour concludes this afternoon.

2019 Narrative

The tour began with a meeting at the airport after my colleague Cristi picked up some of the participants from a couple of hotels in Bucharest. This was followed by a quick dinner in a restaurant nearby before we took a short flight (1 hour) to Suceava – and that’s where I met the group. We then drove to our comfy accommodation where we spent 3 nights.

We kept the second day of our trip relaxed, given our late arrival the previous evening. So, after a leisurely breakfast, we had a morning outing around Sucevita Monastery which produced our first special bird (Nutcracker) not more than 100 metres from our accommodation, and then just when we started walking along a stream we had our Dipper. The trip up the valley also revealed a good selection of passerines (a good comparison between Marsh and Willow Tits for example). Close to lunchtime, when bird activity started to get quiet, we visited to the beautiful Sucevita Monastery - the largest and the last built of the painted Monasteries. Lunch in the hotel restaurant followed by a siesta break, and then an evening outing near the hotel in the old forests of firs, beech and spruce, was rather quiet.

The next day, still in Sucevita, we had a pre-breakfast trip that produced some really good views of a mixture of warblers and tits, as well as a nice Red Squirrel within the grounds itself. After breakfast we headed for some altitude on the Obcina Mare ridge and we spent the morning with a nice stroll followed by a picnic with a view. Probably one of the best migration days for passerines was had just being in the spot - with good numbers of three species of Flycatcher: Spotted, Red-breasted and Collared; eventually good views of Crested Tit and Black Redstarts, and also a very friendly Black Woodpecker which flew around us a couple of times. On the way down, a small hay meadow showed us our first Red-backed Shrike and a really nice Hoopoe. We made a visit to the Moldovita Monastery and to the workshop of Glicheria, ‘the egg painting lady’, and then headed back to our hotel for dinner and to complete our checklist.

On Day Four, after an early pre-breakfast walk to see different tits, Goldcrest and Nutcracker, then a good meal, we started our journey south. On the way to the beautiful little monastery of Humor we had good views of a couple of Lesser Spotted Eagles, Great Grey and Red-backed Shrikes, Turtle and Stock Doves. After visiting Voronet Monastery (the Sistine Chapel of the East) which was, as usual, a bit busy but rewarding, we had our picnic on the banks of the Moldova River and there we had a watched a Sparrowhawk overhead. The Monastery grounds proved to be as good a birding location as ever, with various woodpeckers and flycatchers around us.

Our accommodation for the night in Agapia was welcoming as ever, and in the morning we left very early to visit the local monastery and its workshops. After that a long drive, a picnic stop on the banks of a pond allowed us to see a confiding Osprey. We later arrived at Galati for our first encounter with the famous Danube River, at the ferry crossing. Another hour and a half later and we were enjoying watching the birds from the Ponton deck with a beer on the side, or a gin & tonic, or a soft drink depending on the taste. In the evening our first dinner onboard was something to remember.

The next couple of days were very much a repetition of each except some of the birds were different. Pre-breakfast birding from the deck, breakfast, small boat outings along the smaller channels of the Delta, back onto the Ponton, lunch, birding from the deck with the Ponton moving along the river, evening outings in the small boats, back to the Ponton for dinner.

We had Little Crake, a few Dalmatian Pelicans, and a lot more (almost 2000) White Pelicans, Greylag Geese, various ducks, terns (Whiskered, White Winged, Caspian, etc.), all the herons, all the grebes, and White-tailed Eagles. The number of different species was not as striking as the number in which each species was present.

On Day 8, we came off the Ponton after breakfast and started our onward journey early, thanks to all participants being on time. This gave us time to do some good birding along the winding road down to the southern end of the Danube Delta Biosphere Reserve in Vadu. The first stop was in Babadag Forest near Celic Dere where we had a variety of woodpeckers (Grey-headed, Syrian, and Great Spotted), and lots of Hawfinches. Then the target species showed up and displayed to us all - Sombre Tit. The next planned stop, the Byzantine Fortress of Enisala, produced a nice Isabelline Wheatear. Later we drove through the rolling steppe and had excellent views of steppe specialities such as Tawny Pipit, Short-toed Lark, craggy-areas specialities such as Eastern Black-eared and Pied Wheatears. For those who had already seen Western Black-eared Wheatear elsewhere, this was an easy armchair tick as here this species is officially Eastern. The afternoon was had watching a raptor display with Montagu’s Harrier, Long-legged Buzzard, and Booted Eagle. This was a good migration day which made it one which had the biggest list.

Day 9 was the day for looking for waders, ducks, and some steppe birding. The morning on the Black Sea shore and the drive there through the marshes was really good with a selection of waders including Broad-billed Sandpiper, Collared Pratincole, then, after our picnic, we visited the Greek ruins in Histria and were rewarded when visiting the museum by finding a bush which had at least 3 species of warblers flitting around.

Day 10 was a travel day back to Bucharest Airport but not before seeing our first Little Owl en route. Also on the way back we made another stop at the beautiful Refinery Pond which revealed a new bird for the trip:  Bar-tailed Godwit.

At the end of our tour of Romania we could boast about a very impressive total list of 172 species; one being seen for the first time. That is indeed impressive considering the trip has been running for more than 16 years. Oh, and we managed to see all the species heard…eventually. Thanks to all the participants and their keen eyes we managed to spot all these birds. 

-          Tudor Blaj

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